Empire, E4 - TV review

This series is trash-tastic and watchable in a way that E!'s equivalent The Royals hasn't managed

Empire, E4

Empire, the soapy, hip-hop melodrama, that's taken the US by storm, finally arrived on E4 last night.

Music mogul Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) is the kind of power player who gets messages from the President ("Tell Barack, yes, but this is the last one for the next few months"), but can still be brought low by terminal illness and the return of his ex-wife (played with pizsazz by Taraji P Henson). "Cookie's coming home," she self-narrated, in case you were wondering who that angry woman in the skin-tight leopard-print dress was.

Cookie is the kind of character that crams several different exquisite outfit changes into a 45-minute episode and whose pronouncements often require a drum-roll introduction – "I'm hear to get what's mine," she told anyone who would listen. It's down to her, plus a soundtrack overseen by hit-maker Timbaland that this series is trash-tastic and watchable in a way that E!'s equivalent The Royals hasn't managed. Sorry, Liz Hurley, but sometimes bad acting is just bad acting.