The Orville is FOX’s Largest Drama Premiere Since Empire

FOX’s The Orville premiere was the most watched since the premiere of Empire

The FOX space adventure series The Orville, starring Seth MacFarlane, just posted the largest numbers for a drama premiere since Empire in Live+3 ratings and multi-platform viewers. The series garnered a 3.5 L3 rating and 11.3 million total viewers, as well as 650,000 across Fox Now and Hulu. The premiere episode posted a +30% gain from the same day last week at the same time. In its Tuesday encore, The Orville posed 13 million viewers across all platforms.

RELATED: The Orville Review

The Orville offers a live-action, hour-long series set 400 years in the future that follows the adventures of the titular Orville, a mid-level exploratory spaceship, as its crew, both human and alien, face the wonders and dangers of outer space, while also dealing with the familiar, often humorous problems of everyday life.

In the 25th century, Earth is part of the Planetary Union, a far-reaching, advanced and mostly peaceful civilization with a fleet of 3,000 ships. Down on his luck after a bitter divorce, Planetary Union officer Ed Mercer MERCER (MacFarlane) finally gets his chance to command one of these ships: the U.S.S. Orville. Determined to prove his worth and write a new chapter in his life, Ed finds that task all the more difficult when the First Officer assigned to his ship is his ex-wife, Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki). As the new commander, Ed assembles a qualified, but eccentric crew, including his best friend, Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes), who has problems with authority, but is the best helmsman in the fleet; Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald), one of the Union’s most accomplished physicians; Bortus (Peter Macon), an alien from a single-sex species; Isaac (Mark Jackson), an artificial life-form from a machine society that thinks biological life-forms are inferior; navigator John Lamarr (J. Lee), whose casual humor cuts through even the most dire situations; Alara Kitan (Halston Sage), a young, inexperienced security officer whose home planet’s high gravity gives her superior physical strength; and Yaphit, a gelatinous creature voiced by comedian Norm Macdonald. Somehow, Ed and Kelly must put the past behind them and, with the help of the crew, navigate fascinating and sometimes dangerous adventures in outer space, as well as the tumultuous and captivating day-to-day personal relationships with their colleagues.

Are you guys watching The Orville? Let us know @ComingSoonnet.