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Although the pilot for Sleepy Hollow entertained me, it was, as Dr. Shrout puts it, “woefully inaccurate”. The only correct reference to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is Ichabod Crane’s name. He never marries Katrina. Also, the Headless Horseman is not one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and the Catholic Priest would look at the apocalypse with anticipation, rather than dread. Also, the fact that the Horseman is not a man makes his character a misnomer. I could continue about non-historical inaccuracies, but I won’t.
From a historical perspective, the episode is wrong about many historical aspects of the Salem Witch Trials. First of all, they occurred in the 17th century, not the 18th century. If the writers worried about being historically accurate, they would have changed this aspect. After seeing the first episode, I don’t see how vital the time period would have been to the story, but the time period of Ichabod Crane’s origins and his wife’s trial could become more important later on in the show. Also, at the time of the Salem Witch Trials, the Church was the organization prosecuting all of the supposed witches, but in the story, Kristina and the priest are on the same side. The story would fall apart if it were historically accurate.
Luckily, I can still look at entertainment in the historical fiction genre as entertaining even when it is inaccurate. I do, however, appreciate these narratives much more when they are historically accurate. Accuracy gives a greater sense of reality in the situation, where as inaccuracy seems to take these stories out of the historical fiction genre and put them into the fantasy genre.