Few network dramas of the 2010s moved as fast, or as loudly, as Empire. It arrived in 2015 as one of network television's biggest breakout hits, pairing boardroom drama with original songs on nearly every episode.
What is Empire about?
Lucious Lyon has spent decades turning a small record label into a global hip-hop and R&B powerhouse, and as the series opens he receives a serious diagnosis that forces him to think about who inherits it. Rather than naming an heir outright, he sets his three sons against one another: Andre, the business-school graduate who runs the numbers but lacks the artist's ear; Jamal, the gifted singer-songwriter Lucious has kept out of the spotlight; and Hakeem, the youngest, a rapper who wants the company handed to him on reputation alone. The contest sharpens the moment Cookie Lyon walks free after seventeen years in prison. She helped build the label in its earliest days and served the sentence rather than let Lucious go down with her, and she returns intent on collecting the half of the company she believes is hers. What follows is boardroom maneuvering, family loyalty tested in public, and a catalogue of original music performed by the cast, which makes the show as much a music series as a drama.
About the cast
Terrence Howard leads as Lucious opposite Taraji P. Henson as Cookie, a pairing that anchored the show's early seasons. Bryshere Y. Gray, Jussie Smollett and Trai Byers play the three sons, with Ta'Rhonda Jones, Serayah and Gabourey Sidibe rounding out a large ensemble drawn from both the label's staff and the Lyon family's inner circle.
Context & significance
Empire landed in a run of splashy network soaps built around a single powerful family, but its music-industry setting and its use of real original songs each week set it apart from courtroom and hospital dramas doing similar work elsewhere on the schedule. The show leans on hip-hop and R&B as a backdrop rather than a novelty, treating the Lyon label's catalogue as seriously as its boardroom fights, and it built a large enough following to keep expanding the family's rivalries across several seasons.
Watching Empire on Ktime
Empire streams on K-Time with a free account login, and no separate purchase is required to browse the catalogue page itself. K-Time's Farsi-language interface and search make it easy for Persian-speaking viewers to find English-language series like this one alongside the rest of the library.