If you tuned in last night, what did you think?
All the footage I’d seen of the new series prior to last night’s debut intrigued me enough to want to check it out, so I definitely watched. And I enjoyed it, which is a very rare thing for me to say when it comes to network TV shows in 2013.
It was well-acted, with an intriguing, albeit familiar story, and just sinister enough (as sinister as Broadcast network TV allows) to keep me engaged throughout.
Episode 1 threw quite a bit at us right from the start – understandably so, I suppose. Think of episode 1 as you would the first 15 minutes of your typical Hollywood movie – meant to thrill, excite and hook you as quickly as possible, so that you’ll hopefully stay on for the ride that’s to come. So I wouldn’t expect every single episode to be as action-packed as the first one, but that’s OK. They don’t all need to be. It’s a roller coaster ride!
But I dug it, and, while it’s not what I’d call a heady series, I’ll return for episode 2.
A part of me would love to see a series like this on cable TV instead, where the rules of what’s *acceptable* to broadcast tend to be more lenient, meaning a series like Sleepy Hollow would only up the ante on what’s considered disturbing, eerie, and sinister, making it all-the-more exciting to watch, me thinks. But I’ll take this for now, and hope that it can keep up the momentum. With a cast of diverse leads (a black American woman in Nicole Beharie, a black American man in Orlando Jones, and a Korean-American man in John Cho, notably), it would be great to see a series that proves itself over time, survive the itchy trigger fingers of studio execs, looking to quickly cut those programs that aren’t drawing the kind of audience they expect them to.
As much talk as has been given to Kerry Washington’s historical “black leading woman in a dramatic TV series” in ABC’s Scandal, don’t forget Nicole Beharie could make a splash of her own in FOX’s Sleepy Hollow, which itself is also a drama, but with adventure and mystery aspects to it, making it an entirely different kind of show, compared to Scandal.
I don’t have the debut episode’s ratings yet, so I can’t say how well it did. But when I have the numbers, I’ll certainly publish them here.
It you tuned in, what did you think?
