DBF-New-Vintage-Headerv4
HIGHEST RATED NEW TV SHOWS COLLECTION
Only new scripted TV Shows  |  NO Documentaries  | No Animated shows  |  No Reality TV
The Top 25 Highest Rated New TV Shows of 2016
The Top 25 Highest Rated New TV Shows of 2016

Here is a look at the highest rated brand new scripted TV shows that debuted in 2016. The ratings are averaged from the scores on IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes.

25 – People of Earth
Comedy
17 October 2016   –  Cancelled  |  2 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.7  |  RT Audience:  8.6  |  RT Critics:  8.9
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.40 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Skeptical journalist Ozzie Graham investigates a support group for alien abductees to write about the members’ supposed encounters. The more he digs into their oddball claims, the more he realizes there is truth in their stories and possibly even signs that point to his own alien abduction.
24 – Baskets
Comedy
21 January 2016  –  ended  |  4 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.6  |  RT Audience:  8.6  |  RT Critics:  9.2
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.47 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Stars Zach Galifianakis as Chip Baskets, who wants to follow his dream of being a French clown—however, reality keeps interfering. Saddled with financial difficulties and facing an impenetrable language barrier, he moves back home to Bakersfield with high hopes. There, he is forced to confront his past while working as a rodeo clown and competing with his siblings for his mother’s approval and affection.
23 – The Detour
Comedy
11 April 2016 –  cancelled  |  4 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.7  |  RT Audience:  8.9  |  RT Critics:  9.0
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.53 /10
SYNOPSIS:
A what-in-the-living-hell-is-wrong-with-this-family comedy created by comic super-couple Jason Jones & Samantha Bee and inspired by their own experiences with family trips. Unfiltered dad Nate hits the road with wife Robin and kids Delilah and Jared. Every leg of their trip is fraught with disaster as they encounter one hellish turn after another. If there’s trouble on the road, this family will find it and plow into it.
22 – Letterkenny
Comedy
7 February 2016 –  ongoing  |  10 Seasons so far
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.7  |  RT Audience:  8.4  |  RT Critics:  N/A
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.55 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Letterkenny follows Wayne, a good-ol’ country boy in Letterkenny, Ontario trying to protect his homegrown way of life on the farm, against a world that is constantly evolving around him. The residents of Letterkenny belong to one of three groups: Hicks, Skids, and Hockey Players. The three groups are constantly feuding with each other over seemingly trivial matters; often ending with someone getting their ass kicked.
21 – Motherland
Comedy
6 September 2016  –  ongoing  |  3 Seasons so far
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.9  |  RT Audience:  8.7  |  RT Critics:  9.1
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.57 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Sitcom about navigating the trials and traumas of middle-class motherhood, looking at the competitive and unromantic side of parenting.
20 – Love
Comedy  |  Drama
19 February 2016   –  ended  |  3 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.7  |  RT Audience:  8.7  |  RT Critics:  9.4
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.60 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Created by Judd Apatow, The series is presented as a “down-to-earth look at dating”, exploring male and female perspectives on romantic relationships through the characters Mickey and Gus, played by Jacobs and Rust, respectively. Mickey and Gus are two untrustworthy people, each with significant emotional baggage, attempting to build a trusting relationship with each other; Mickey is an alcoholic, a love/sex addict, a pot stirrer, and someone who tends to be dishonest with herself and others, while Gus is awkward, emotionally needy, oblivious to social cues, and prone to occasional outbursts when things do not go his way
19 – American Crime Story
Crime   |  Drama
2 February 2016  –  ongoing  |  3 Seasons so far
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.4  |  RT Audience:  9.0  |  RT Critics:  8.4
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.60 /10
SYNOPSIS:

An anthology series centered around some of history’s most famous criminal investigations.
The first season, subtitled The People v. O. J. Simpson, chronicled the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, and was based on the book The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin. It premiered on February 2, 2016. The second season, subtitled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, chronicled the murder of designer Gianni Versace by spree-killer Andrew Cunanan, and based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth. It premiered on January 17, 2018, and concluded on March 21, 2018. The third season, subtitled Impeachment, chronicles the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal, and is based on the book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President, also by Toobin. It premiered on September 7, 2021.

18 – This Is Us
Comedy   |  Drama
20 September 2016   –  ended  |  6 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.7  |  RT Audience:  7.8  |  RT Critics:  9.4
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.63 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Follows the lives and families of three adults living and growing up in the United States of America in present and past times. As their paths cross and their life stories intertwine in curious ways, we find that several of them share the same birthday – and so much more than anyone would expect.
17 – Insecure 
Comedy   |  Drama
9 October 2016  –  ended  |  5 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.0  |  RT Audience:  8.2  |  RT Critics:  9.7
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.63 /10
SYNOPSIS:

Within the first season, eight episodes unpacked the story of the Black female experience from the perspective of two female protagonists, Issa (Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji), who have been best friends with each other since their college days at Stanford. Both in their late 20s, they navigate career and relationship experiences while living in their hometown of South Los Angeles, California.

The two share a close bond, and throughout the show, they deal with internal struggles, their friendship and the African American community. Issa works at a non-profit that benefits middle-school aged students of color called “We Got Y’all”. She struggles to reignite the passion in her relationship with her long-term boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis), who has been slacking in their relationship since his start-up company failed. Molly is a corporate attorney who has career success but difficulty with dating men. The half-hour series explores social and racial issues that relate to the contemporary American Black experience

16 – High Maintenance
Comedy
16 September 2016 –  ended  |  4 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.1  |  RT Audience:  8.0  |  RT Critics:  9.8
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.63 /10
SYNOPSIS:
High Maintenance follows The Guy, a cannabis courier (played by Sinclair), as he delivers his product to clients in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Each episode focuses on different characters as their lives intersect with The Guy. The full series consists of six web series followed by four television seasons, released from November 2012 to April 2020
15 – The Exorcist
Mystery  |  Drama
23 September 2016  –  cancelled  |  2 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.9  |  RT Audience:  9.2  |  RT Critics:  8.9
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.67 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Something is wrong in the Rance household. Angela Rance (played by Geena Davis) suspects demonic possession and enlists the help of two priests: the progressive, but naive Father Tomas Ortega and the broken holy warrior, Father Marcus Keane. Together they will be drawn into a nightmare beyond imagination.
14 – Underground
Drama
9 March 2016   –  cancelled  |  2 Seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.7  |  RT Audience:  8.8  |  RT Critics:  9.6
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.70 /10
SYNOPSIS:
A group of slaves plan a daring 600-mile escape from a Georgia plantation. Along the way, they are aided by a secret abolitionist couple running a station on the Underground Railroad as they attempt to evade the people charged with bringing them back, dead or alive.
13 – The Night Manager
Drama  |  Mystery  |  Crime
21 February 2016  –  ended  |  Limited mini-series
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.1  |  RT Audience:  8.9  |  RT Critics:  9.1
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.70 /10
SYNOPSIS:

The Night Manager stars Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander, David Harewood and Elizabeth Debicki.

Jonathan Pine, night manager of a luxury hotel in Cairo and former British soldier, is recruited by Angela Burr, the manager of a Foreign and Commonwealth Office task force investigating illegal arms sales, to infiltrate the inner circle of arms dealer Richard Roper.

12 – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Comedy  |  Sci-Fi & Fantasy  |  Crime
22 October 2016   –  cancelled  |  2 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.2  |  RT Audience:  9.5  |  RT Critics:  8.5
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.73 /10
SYNOPSIS:

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is based around the eccentric Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett) who claims to be a “holistic detective”, investigating obscure cases based on the inter-connectivity of all things. During the first season he befriends Todd Brotzman (Elijah Wood) and Farah Black (Jade Eshete) who help him with his cases. Dirk’s past is linked with “Project Blackwing”, a secret CIA project to evaluate subjects with strange abilities. Dirk is not only followed by agents of Blackwing trying to recapture him but also by Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif), another Blackwing subject who considers herself a “holistic assassin” and believes she is destined to kill Dirk. 

11 – The Tick
Comedy  |  Sci-Fi & Fantasy  |  Action & Adventure
19 August 2016   –  cancelled  |  2 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  7.4  |  RT Audience:  9.3  |  RT Critics:  9.5
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.73 /10
SYNOPSIS:

Based on the comic book of the same name and starring Peter Serafinowicz as The Tick.
The Tick is a nigh invulnerable superhero in a blue tick suit who arrives in the city to help combat crime and uncover the mysterious figure behind the city’s underworld. He befriends a nervous and mild-mannered young man named Arthur who becomes his sidekick. They come to realize that an apparently long-dead supervillain called “The Terror” may still be pulling the strings in the city’s underworld.

10 – Atlanta
Comedy  |  Drama
6 September 2016  –  ongoing  |  4 seasons so far
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.6  |  RT Audience:  8.1  |  RT Critics:  9.7
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.80 /10
SYNOPSIS:

Atlanta is an American comedy-drama television series created and starring Donald Glover.
The series follows Earn (Donald Glover) during his daily life in Atlanta, Georgia, as he tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his ex-girlfriend Van (Zazie Beetz), who is also the mother of his daughter Lottie; as well as his parents and his cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), who raps under the stage name “Paper Boi”. Having dropped out of Princeton University, Earn has no money and no home and consequently alternates between staying with his parents and his ex-girlfriend. Once he realizes that his cousin is on the verge of stardom, he seeks to reconnect with him in order to improve his life and the life of his daughter.

9 – The Durrells 
Drama  |  Comedy
3 April 2016 –  ended  |  4 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.2  |  RT Audience:  8.9  |  RT Critics:  9.4
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.83 /10
SYNOPSIS:

The Durrells (known in North America as The Durrells in Corfu) is a British comedy-drama television series loosely based on Gerald Durrell’s three autobiographical books about his family’s four years (1935–1939) on the Greek island of Corfu.

The series begins in 1935, when Louisa Durrell suddenly announces that she and her four children will move from Bournemouth to the Greek island of Corfu. Her husband died some years earlier and the family is experiencing financial problems. A struggle ensues as the family adapts to life on the island and a shortage of money. Despite a lack of electricity and of modern sewage systems, Corfu proves to be a cheap and earthly paradise.

8 – Travelers
Drama  |  Sci-Fi & Fantasy
17 October 2016  –  cancelled  |  3 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.0  |  RT Audience:  9.7  |  RT Critics:  n/a
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.85 /10
SYNOPSIS:
In a post-apocalyptic future, thousands of special operatives are tasked with preventing the collapse of society. These operatives, known as “travelers”, have their consciousnesses sent back in time and transferred into the “host” body of present-day individuals who are about to die, minimizing unexpected impact on the future. The transfer requires the exact location of the target, made possible by 21st-century smartphones and GPS, providing time, elevation, latitude, and longitude (TELL) coordinates that are archived for use in the future. No transfer can be safely made to a time prior to one already performed.
7 – The Crown
Drama
4 November 2016  –  ongoing  |  4 seasons so far
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.7  |  RT Audience:  9.1  |  RT Critics:  9.0
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.93 /10
SYNOPSIS:

The Crown is a historical drama television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

The first season covers the period from Elizabeth’s marriage to Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1947 to the disintegration of her sister Princess Margaret’s engagement to Group Captain Peter Townsend in 1955. The second season covers the period from the Suez Crisis in 1956 to the retirement of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1963 and the birth of Prince Edward in 1964. The third season spans 1964 to 1977, includes Harold Wilson’s two periods as prime minister, and introduces Camilla Shand. The fourth season spans 1979 to the early 1990s and includes Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister and Prince Charles’s marriage to Lady Diana Spencer. The fifth and sixth seasons, which will close the series, will cover the Queen’s reign into the 21st century.

6 – Stranger Things
Drama  |  Sci-Fi & Fantasy  |  Mystery
15 July 2016  –  ongoing  |  4 seasons so far
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.7  |  RT Audience:  9.0  |  RT Critics:  9.1
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.93 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Stranger Things is set in the fictional rural town of Hawkins, Indiana, during the 1980s. The nearby Hawkins National Laboratory ostensibly performs scientific research for the United States Department of Energy, but secretly does experiments into the paranormal and supernatural, including those that involve human test subjects. Inadvertently, they have created a portal to an alternate dimension, “the Upside Down”. The influence of the Upside Down starts to affect the unknowing residents of Hawkins in calamitous ways
5 – The Good Place
Sci-Fi & Fantasy  |  Comedy
19 September 2016 –  ended  |  4 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.2  |  RT Audience:  8.9  |  RT Critics:  9.7
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
8.93 /10
SYNOPSIS:

The series is centered around an afterlife in which humans are sent to “the Good Place” or “the Bad Place” after death. All humans are assigned a numerical score based on the morality of their conduct in life, and only those with the very highest scores are sent to the Good Place, where they enjoy eternal happiness with their every wish granted, guided by an artificial intelligence named Janet; all others experience an eternity of torture in the Bad Place.

In the first season, amoral loner Eleanor and small-time criminal Jason believe that they have been sent to the Good Place incorrectly. Eleanor’s assigned soulmate, Chidi, a moral philosopher, attempts to teach them ethics so they can earn their presence there. Jason’s soulmate, wealthy socialite Tahani, attempts to help Michael, the kindly designer of their neighborhood, deal with the chaos apparently caused by Eleanor and Jason’s presence. In the season finale, Eleanor realizes that the four humans have actually been in an experimental Bad Place all along, chosen by Michael to torture each other emotionally and psychologically for eternity.

4 – The Night Of
Crime  |  Drama  |  Mystery
10 July 2016  –  ended  |  Limited Mini-series
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.5  |  RT Audience:  9.3  |  RT Critics:  9.4
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
9.07 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Starring Riz Ahmed and John Turturro. In October 2014, Nasir “Naz” Khan is a naive Pakistani-American college student living in Queens, New York. After stealing his father’s cab one night with intentions to attend a popular party, Naz picks up a young woman, Andrea, and ends up cancelling his plans to attend the party so he can spend the evening with her. After a night of sex and drugs with Andrea, Naz wakes and finds her stabbed to death in her bedroom; he has no recollection of what happened.
3 – Flowers
Comedy  |  Drama
11 June 2018   –  ended  |  2 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.1  |  RT Audience:  9.3  |  RT Critics:  10
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
9.13 /10
SYNOPSIS:
The series follows the Flowers family, consisting of depressed father and children’s author Maurice (Julian Barratt); music teacher wife Deborah (Olivia Colman), their 25-year-old twin children: inventor son Donald (Daniel Rigby) and musician daughter Amy (Sophia Di Martino); Maurice’s senile mother Hattie (Leila Hoffman); and Maurice’s Japanese illustrator Shun (Will Sharpe).
2 – Mum
Comedy
3 May 2016   –  ended  |  3 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.2  |  RT Audience:  9.6  |  RT Critics:  10
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
9.27 /10
SYNOPSIS:

Mum is a British sitcom written by Stefan Golaszewski centred around recently widowed, suburban 59-year-old Cathy (played by Lesley Manville) and her family, following her husband’s death.

We follow her and her family through a year of new beginnings as she rebuilds her life following the death of her husband. Mum is joined by her supportive life-long friend Michael. Through a year of new beginnings she rebuilds her life surrounded by her family: son Jason and his girlfriend Kelly; her brother Derek and his new partner, Pauline; and her in-laws.

1 – Fleabag
Comedy | Drama
4 March 2019  –  ended  |  2 seasons
NETWORK:
IMDb:  8.7  |  RT Audience:  9.3  |  RT Critics:  10
COMBINED SCORE:
Star icon
9.33 /10
SYNOPSIS:
Fleabag is a British comedy-drama television series created and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, based on her one-woman show first performed in 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The basic premise is about a young woman trying to cope with life in London whilst coming to terms with a recent tragedy.
SO WHICH NETWORKS DID THE BEST?

A great year for the BBC with a record 5 entries into the top 25. Netflix did well with two of its flagship shows launching in 2016.

5
Fleabag  |  Mum  |  Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency  |  The Night Manager  |  Motherland
4
Stranger Things  |  The Crown  |  Travelers  |  Love
3
The Night Of  |  High Maintenance  | Insecure
3
Atlanta  |  American Crime Story  |  Baskets
2
The Good Place  |  This Is Us
2
The Detour  |  People of Earth
1
The Tick
1
Flowers 
1
Letterkenny
1
The Exorcist
1
The Durrells 
1
Underground 
More Great Articles;