Revenge, E4, review - Telegraph Could we ever get bored of TV dramas about the lives of rich Americans? E4 thinks not. Running in a groove well-rutted by Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives, 90210 and One Tree Hill, they now bring us Revenge. It's a 22-part series of intrigue and betrayal among New York's well-groomed socialites, set in the Hamptons - Manhattan's upmarket answer to Cornwall. Tonight's first episode crammed in a bewildering amount of plot. It began with a context-less murder on a beach, during an engagement party for protagonist Emily Thorne (Emily Van Camp) and wealthy Daniel Grayson (Josh Bowman). Then it flipped back five months, to show Emily arriving on the island, seemingly determined to cause trouble. Her prime target for the series is Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe), the local queen bee. Buzzing irritatingly in the background though were tiresome British party-planner Ashley (Ashley Madekwe), neurotic entrepreneur Nolan (Gabriel Mann) and bland heartthrobs Daniel and Jack (Nick Wechsler). If she can tell the difference between these identikit-characters, perhaps she'll cause trouble for them too. In between all of this was a sequence of flashbacks to Emily's childhood. We learned that she used to come here with her father, but was called Amanda Clark back then. Then we learned that seventeen years ago Emily's father was framed by the Graysons and ended up dying in jail. Right at the end we learned that she had spent time in prison. Her bitchiness began to make more sense. The plot has promise, but sadly the first episode was weighed down by some amazingly leaden writing. When it wasn't being horrendously clichéd ("Eww, get a room") it was being corny ("You must come from a family of polar bears. Because that water is ice cold"). The writing wasn't the only thing that was hackneyed. In case we hadn't worked out from the plot and, er, the title that it was about revenge, the figure of eight infinity symbol appeared everywhere: tattooed on Emily's arm, engraved on the balcony, drawn in the sand. The idea being that, sigh, what goes around, comes around. The first episode of this kind of series has to do so much scene-setting that it's almost bound to be a bit clunky, so it's probably too soon to judge Revenge fairly. It has been successful in America, and in its glossy portrayal of the gilded-but-troubled American aristocracy, it is classic E4 fodder. But if the writing doesn't start to match the programme's ambitions soon, viewers might start wanting their own payback.