1 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Netflix

When have we been more in need of a joyous, candy-coloured, relentlessly perky, exclamation-mark-ridden, outrageously funny sitcom about … an abduction survivor?

2 Wolf Hall - BBC2

Mark Rylance's Cromwell became one of the people of the year, 475 years after he died.

3 Mad Men - Sky Atlantic

Sky Atlantic The really magnificent thing was not the nice feeling that Don had attained career zenith, but that expectation was so totally confounded.

4 Catastrophe - Channel 4

Catastrophe is full of cynical and sinful people, but at its heart it’s an ordinary love story, couched in some first-class swearing, about sexual honesty, served with a side-plate of adultery, lust, elderly parents, flirtatious colleagues, money worries and a dead dog.

5 London Spy - BBC2

London Spy succeeded in keeping a place in the British schedules for the idea of Hard TV: dramas that demand intense concentration and refuse to give up all their secrets on a first - or even a second - viewing.

6 Master of None - Netflix

Master of None sits in the post-Louie, Curb Your Enthusiasm genre of indie sitcoms: a hybrid of surreal moments and awkward modern manners that’s also deeply moving.

7 Mr Robot - Amazon

Prime A mesmerising, trippy tale of hacktivism, conspiracies and corporate evil.

8 Empire - E4

Call it a hip-hop soap, call it the black Dynasty, call it groundbreaking, but above all Lee Daniels’s everyday tale of record company shenanigans was a ray of sunshine in E4’s weeknight TV schedule.

9 Better Call Saul - Netflix

In the end, Better Call Saul was far better than it had any reason to be. It was funny - but it had real depth. Over its 10 episodes, Better Call Saul delved into territory more emotional (and more weird) than anyone ever expected.

10 River - BBC1

Abi Morgan's shrewd, charming and sometimes trippy detective series, set in the built-up concrete jungle of east London, did something genuinely new.