Shot in North Carolina, creator, writer and executive producer Josh Corbin's female revenge thriller is set in a cold, hard world. As it opens, Katherine (Abigail Spencer) is locked in a showdown with her brother, Burt (Rory Cochrane), at the scene of a mass killing. The confrontation does not end well. "I will see you again," she vows as he exacts his bloody revenge. Cut to years later and Katherine is now Doris, a blonde and bespectacled middle-class wife, married to an ailing husband whose restaurant is an object of desire for his nasty family. More threats and violence ensue.

Meanwhile, a plotline is developing involving a new initiate to the brutal Banished Brawlers gang and, yes, there's more violence. A lot of menacing men in this harsh drama seem to be perpetually itching for a fight, so perhaps part of the premise is that they need a gutsy woman to show them who's boss. Certainly in this seedy world of strip clubs, drug trades, drag races, gang wars, bullies and baddies, that seems to be the narrative thrust.

Elementary

Ten, 10.40pm

There's an awful lot of talking in Elementary. The crime show about a modern-day New York-based Sherlock Holmes is loaded with exposition: characters continually explain things to each other with thick chunks of dialogue. Sometimes these globs are so heavy as to be virtually indecipherable. Maybe this is a consequence of so much of the crime-solving occurring within the fertile and febrile mind of the eccentric Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller, who also directs this episode).

So he and his sidekick, Dr Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), frequently have to explain what they're thinking, to each other, to other characters in the show, and to us, the viewers. But it's not especially interesting or satisfying. The impulse is to tune it out, go with the flow and hope that it starts to make sense as events unfold. Here, there's a lot of explanation required as the investigation of an accident involving a truck, a van and an explosion spirals out to take on theories about El Salvadorean gangs, terrorist plots, the FBI and real-estate developers.