Best TV Series of 2016 That Had Us Waiting on Every Episode.

There are so many TV shows covering every genre that narrowing down the best becomes a tedious task. There were some shows this year that had us binging on all the previous seasons, while waiting for a new episode each week, and then there were some that managed to grab my attention from the very first run. There were some superb performances, some very good comebacks and quirky new worlds to get used to. Let's see which shows stood out from the rest, and had us waiting on every episode:

There is this unsaid rule that TV Shows tend to get boring after the fifth season but Game of Thrones annulled any such accusation with Winter finally hitting Westeros. After last year’s slow-build, the latest run of HBO’s fantasy hit found a renewed sense of purpose and vigour, bolstered by booming budgets and fever-pitch hype. Working without the structure of George R.R. Martin's novels for the first time, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss delivered a spectacular run of episodes which were less about visual delight and took the audience on a crazy emotional ride. Right from big revelations about Snow's paternity to Hodor's story, the 'Battle of the Bastards', rivalling any cinematic battle and the bone-chilling soundtrack to the season finale, GOT had everyone talking. We can just hope that the next season tops this one and gives it the successor it truly deserves.

The biggest TV story of summer 2016 came more or less out of nowhere, creating a well-deserved phenomenon over the course of its eight episodes. Stranger Things, from Matt and Ross Duffer, had everyone talking this year, whether it was the feeling of nostalgia for the ‘80s that it brought, the excellent performance from Winona Ryder, the brilliance of the young cast, a mysterious but kick-ass character named Eleven, the Upside Down and the Demogorgon that lives there, or Barb. A taut, impeccably-structured exercise in nostalgia, Stranger Things tapped into the idea that those kinds of movies you used to love back in the day aren't gone—they're just on television now.

HBO lives true to “Valar morghulis” ("all men must die", in case you don’t speak High Valyrian) and applies to TV shows, so it must be happy to see Westworld ride in as a buzzy, complicated and beautifully shot potential replacement for when its biggest gun (Re:Game Of Thrones) heads into the sunset. With a finale that left viewers wondering how they’re going to wait until 2018 to find out what’s next, the ambition shown in Westworld was epic and awe-inspiring and didn’t disappoint. The show, based on Michael Crichton’s 1973 techno-fear thriller of a theme park loaded with robots that starts to go badly wrong, the story here evolves into a meditation of human consciousness, ethics and what depths humans can plumb when given free rein.

This political drama has never felt more culturally important thst it did this election sesason, as HBO brought to us another hilarious season of this black-hearted series. Now through its fifth season, Armando Iannucci may have left the show he created, but Veep remains as furiously fast and fantastically foul-mouthed a farce as it ever was, with one of the most capable ensemble casts working in comedy today. New showrunner David Mandel didn't falter for a second–the rapid-fire dialogue was sharp and acerbic as ever, and the characters just as mesmerizingly awful, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Selina plumbing new depths as she gradually lost control of her presidency. In a year where the US and the UK both went to the polls, it felt as vital a piece of catharsis as ever.

Staying consistently strong in your storytelling season after season is no easy feat, but The Americans, soon heading into its fifth season, seems to do it with absolute ease. In the shadow of the nuclear-powered 1980s, Matthew Rhys' Philip and Keri Russell's Elizabeth Jennings are Russian sleeper agents living a seemingly normal life in suburbia. . ‘Seemingly’ being the operative word, as they also smuggle information, develop sources and kill anyone who gets in their way. Add in some powerhouse recurring cast members (Margo Martindale, Frank Langella) and you've got a hell of a show that just kept getting better in its fourth season. Both the show and the actors somehow seem to just keep getting better and more exciting to watch on screen with every passing season.

Five seasons in, Lena Dunham's Girls are no longer just out of college, and forcing them to develop some self-awareness made for one of the show's most satisfying seasons yet. In case you've somehow remained oblivious, Lena Dunham’s comedy drama is a vaguely autobiographical encounter with the lives of four young New York women: Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke and Zosia Mamet. The initial premise was Dunham’s being cut off by her parents and having to survive in the big city alone but it has since grown into a cultural phenomenon. Though Dunham's Hannah was still often frustrating, she began to make sense as the season went on, as did the unexpectedly rich relationship between Adam (Adam Driver) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke). This was a new high watermark as Girls heads into its final season.

Peter Morgan is the brain behind Netflix’s gleefully scurrilous costume soap opera. Other channels may have to tread carefully with Buckingham Palace, but there are no such strictures on the streaming platform.This ambitious chronicle of Queen Elizabeth II's reign could have been a stodgy, exposition-packed chore, or a frothy nightmare along the lines of E!'s The Royals but The Crown turned out to be a thoughtful, rewarding character drama. Beginning with a character vomiting into a toilet bowl on the morning of Elizabeth II (Claire Foy)’s marriage to dastardly foreigner Prince Philip (Matt Smith), this is not a show that shy about breaking the perceptions of what a royal costume drama should be.

Both This Is Us and @Pitch were created by Dan Fogelman and these shows have a tremendous cast of actors bringing their characters and the story to life. Although each pilot had a twist, neither lived or died because of it. Another show that had us glued to the idiot box was Charlie Brooker’s jet-black anthology series Black Mirror. One of the great joys of the speculative portmanteau is not knowing what’s coming next: each episode is a self-contained yarn. The first season in FX’s crime anthology - The People v. O.J.Simpson charted the infamous 1994 murder trial, bursting at the seams with bravura performances from Sarah Paulson’s tenacious district attorney Marcia Clark, to David Schwimmer’s BFF Robert Kardashian, by way of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s titular football star. This was a great year for the Television industry, indeed.