When Fox announced its new shows back in May, I called Sleepy Hollow “among the worst shows I’ve heard of in my life” and compared the concept unfavorably to Heil Honey I’m Home. I still think that the idea of time-travelling Ichabod Crane working alongside a modern cop to fight the Headless Horseman who’s actually one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is monumentally stupid. However, after the recommendation of pretty much every single person with a Tumblr I decided to give show a chance and found it to be the right kind of stupid. It’s dumb as fuck, yes, but it knows it is and it’s fun as hell.
Which is why all those Tumblr fans should find this to be a little good news/bad news.
On the good news side, Fox has decided to renew Sleepy Hollow for a second season after only three episodes. This is a remarkable level of confidence in a freshman series. Fox entertainment chief Kevin Reilly explains:
“The show has proven to be a risk well worth taking – it’s a conceptual blast unlike anything else on television and it all holds together with inventive writing and a fantastic cast. I can’t wait for fans to experience what else is in store for this fall and even more of this wild ride into Season Two.”
And now for the bad news, it doesn’t appear as though Fox has ordered the back half of season one. Puzzling as that may sound, Sleepy Hollow got renewed without getting a full-season pick-up. It seems this is part of Reilly’s plan to have the same kind of shorter season horror success that cable’s had with shows like Walking Dead and American Horror Story.
Will that work out for them? Who knows. But it’s an interesting experiment in leaving fans wanting more.
