It's been yet another stellar year in the world of television, with top notch dramas, gripping crime thrillers, laugh out loud comedies and of course, that show with dragons you may have heard about.

Choosing a top ten is no easy feat, and a lot of quality shows got left on the the editing room floor here. However, in no particular order, the best shows of 2016 are...

1. Stranger Things

The show of the summer may as well go ahead and take the crown for the show of the year, if only for how it captured people's imagination and brought us on the wonderful nostalgic eighties road trip we didn't know we were missing in our lives. The incredible cast, comprised mostly of child actors, as well as the return of nineties screen icon Winona Ryder, made this strange little show about The Upside Down one of our favourite of the year.

2. Game of Thrones

It's hard to find a show that has the whole world gripped like Game of Thrones. It's success is unprecedented, and to be honest, we're already in panic mode at the fact that 2017 will be its second-last season. What is our world without the Dragon Queen, the King of the North and Cersei menacingly drinking bucket loads of wine? The scale and production of this show are reflected in every single moment, and for our money, The Battle of the Bastards is one of the best episodes of television in recent years.

3. Fleabag

One of the hidden gems on this year's TV schedule was undoubtedly Fleabag. The BBC drama, written by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, came off the back of her award-winning one-woman play for the Edinburgh Fringe back in 2013. This initial idea of which came from a challenge Waller-Bridge was set by a friend to come up with a sketch for a 10-minute section in a stand-up storytelling night. It follows the story of Phoebe, a young woman very much unashamedly navigating her way through London life with the sort of dark humour that's been missing from TV these days. Lena Dunham be damned, 2017 is the year of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who has already landed a showrunner gig on BBC America's Killing Eve.

4. Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker left us waiting some time for another series of his dystopian drama Black Mirror, but at long last it arrived on its new home of Netflix in October. This time round we were treated to six episodes instead of the normal three, and off the bat you could see the effect the injection of Netflix's budget had on the series, with higher production values that gave an overall grander scale to each episode. The core motif was still there however and Brooker has found even more new and profound ways of making us question the world we live in and the future we are rapidly hurtling towards. Technology may be our ally now, but Black Mirror has always found a myriad of ways to show us how one day it could far too easily take one large bite out of our collective asses.

5. The Night Of

One of the most talked about shows of the year had to be The Night Of, as the armchair detectives came out in force to asses the case of Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed), in this fictitious drama that followed in the same ilk as the likes of The Jinx and Making a Murderer. The eight-part series saw young student Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed) accused of the murder of a young girl he meets on a night out, and he finds himself up to his neck in evidence that proves as much, but did he really do it? This gripping drama, also starring John Turturro, will have you jotting down clues and contemplating theories like the excellent sleuth you always knew you could be.

6. Narcos

Season two of Narcos hurtled onto Netflix last August and had us all binging on the plot of DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Peña to take down Columbian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The first season of Narcos may have been a sleeper hit for Netflix, but this year it certainly left its mark, and went in some way to filling the hole that Breaking Bad left in our lives. Wagner Moura captivates in the most subtle of ways as Escobar and can safely now sit alongside some of TV's greatest antiheroes.

7. Westworld

It was promised to be the next Game of Thrones, and while we're not sure HBO's big budget offering can ever make it to those great heights, the sheer production alone has earned it a place on this list, not to mention the cast, which saw movie legend Anthony Hopkins stepping onto the small screen. Based on the 1973 Michael Crichton movie of the same name, it tells the story of a world where robots can cater to your every whim, and while the movie followed the story from the perspective of the humans, the TV series turned things on its head and tells the story from the robots point of view. It may have got a bit lost up its own orifice at times, but there was no other show like it in 2016, and we're optimistic that this series could come into its stride down the line, if it makes it that far.

8. American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson

The creator of the successful TV show American Horror Story (as well as Glee, Nip/Tuck and many more) Ryan Murphy, branched out in 2016 with this new series based on the infamous OJ Simpson trial back in 1995 - one of the most watched televised events of our times. We all knew the outcome going into it, but somehow this show managed to take us in on this rollercoaster of a trial, thanks to superb writing, and a cast comprised of Cuba Gooding Jr, John Travolta and David Schwimmer. Sure, it felt like a soap opera at times, but that whole case was a soap opera for the world back in the nineties.

9. This is Us

This new series is still ticking on over on Channel 4 so make sure to catch it if you can. It stars Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia, the latter of which Gilmore Girls fans will know as Jess, and has been flagged as the 'breakout hit' of the autumn TV schedule stateside. It's safe and heartwarming the way Brothers and Sisters was, but we are not going to undermine it by calling it a guilty pleasure. It's the type of show that will pull on the heartstrings of the coldest soul, so if you don't like feeling things, away with you.

10. The Night Manager

It may have been referred to as the Fawlty Tower's reboot on Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe (tee hee), but this crime drama adapted from a John Le Carre novel proves we are all just as fascinated with spy stories as ever. Starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, this cleverly written thriller was one of the shining lights on this year's TV schedule, and a handy enough audition tape for Hiddleston's 007 bid too.