5. Sleepy Hollow

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hFg9qS_u3w&w=584&h=390]

Television has been going a little overboard on the fantasy recently. Just this year, we’ve seen the premieres of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, The Originals and Witches of East End, in addition to the still-to-debut Dracula, starring a perfectly cast Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. With the success of Game of Thrones, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, and Fox clearly wants to have what Grimm is having. However, Sleepy Hollow wisely doesn’t go over the top with kitsch, playing it straighter than you assume a show about a guy wakes up 200 years in the future to solve crimes would.

Like Hannibal, it finds just the right blend of horror, atmosphere and macabre humor, getting fantastic chemistry out of its two leads, Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison. The show never takes its cuckoo premise too seriously (because Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), and it’s a great start to giving us the best possible version of this show. If you’ve been skeptical of giving it a shot, test it out and let Ichabod prove you wrong.