He was tall and exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, and feet that might have served for shovels. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.Okay, I guess 18th century protagonists needed less in the way of chiseled good looks. Icabod's character deficiencies go beyond the physical. He courts the local Bachelorette with an eye to greedily acquiring her considerable inheritance of property and turning it into cold cash. Furthermore, he proves to be a coward, fleeing in fear from the apparition of the Headless Horseman,
The television series upgrades poor Icabod's looks and motivations while creating a mashup with Irving's other famous tale, Rip Van Winkle. So, now dreamboat Crane is a Brit spying for George Washington who is mortally wounded after removing the Horseman's head, and his witch wife Katrina puts a spell on him that makes him sleep for 240 years. Now awake, this Revolutionary War Mulder teams up with a modern Scully to go ghostbusting.
Story needs some clarity, but the narrative is interesting and the cinematography is properly creepy, so it may be worth watching someday. But I pity those people who pick up the book hoping for a romantic stranger and who encounter "a scarecrow eloped from a cornfield."
