The 20 Best New TV Shows of 2016
Below are the highest-scoring first-year TV series debuting in the United States between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2016. Shows are ranked by Metascore (an average of grades from top professional critics on a 0-100 scale) prior to rounding, and any programs with fewer than 7 reviews are excluded. (Note that limited series, as well as TV movies and specials, are ranked in a separate list.)
It might be a cheat to include a series here that already ran for six "seasons" prior to 2016. Those previous episodes, however, came as a web series (albeit a terrific one, which you can now watch on HBO Go), with the show making the jump to HBO for its first proper TV season in September. A comedic anthology series, High Maintenance has just one element guaranteed to appear in each episode: a New York pot dealer played by Ben Sinclair (who also writes and directs the series with his wife, Katja Blichfeld). The focus in each chapter, however, is (usually) on his diverse array of clients, resulting in a series of humorous and miniature but sharply observed character portraits that require no chemical enhancement to enjoy.
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