Take your typical story of the two-sided coin – ‘forgive and forget’ versus ‘pay back’ – add some extra spice and some dark circumstances, and you’ll find the resultant concoction coming out as Revenge – a tale of betrayal, deceit and the framing of an innocent man; the daughter of whom plans to seek said revenge in a way that initially seems unclear, but develops over the course of the series’ pilot episode.
The series opens with a flash-forward to an engagement party, for a girl known only by her first name, and the revelation that her fiancé has been murdered on the beach. The fiancé, it turns out, is the son of a cold-faced, but powerful concealer of raw human emotion – who comes into play later.
Jump back 5 months – armed with an alias and masquerading under a different visual identity, we are introduced to Emily Thorne – a mysterious character who returns to the Hamptons, and to a beach front property frequented by herself and her father. What follows is the unraveling of the mysterious fabric that is her life. We discover that her father was framed for terrorist activity by the very people who knew him – apparently quite well. As a result, we discover, through a friend of her father’s who was unaware of her return, that this woman is in fact called Amanda Clarke.
Including acts such as attempting to poison one of the perpetrators, and messing with the lives of those involved (such as the mother of the aforementioned fiancé), she instantly establishes herself as the ultimate vigilante – taking pay back in whichever form she can get, in as subtle a way as possible.
Emily VanCamp pulls off the protagonist very well, and the undertones of the Stepford Wives contained within makes the series dark and delightfully intriguing at the same time. A must watch for next week – hope you’ll tune in to see how this one pans out!
Revenge, Mondays 9:30pm, 
