The 10 best TV shows of 2016, ranked

With a finite number of hours in the day to watch television, one can feel there will never be enough time to watch everything the critics, social media, our coworkers, friends, and family say we need to see.

It's not just a feeling. We now know it for a fact: There were an estimated 455 scripted TV programs in 2016. And you just can't see them all.

To sit down and name the 10 best shows of the hundreds that aired and streamed this year is a herculean task. So for this list of 2016's best shows, we reflected on all the well-written, superbly acted, and beautifully shot shows of the year (that we were able to check out) and added one more criterion to mix up the selections just a bit: Was it not only good, but surprisingly so?

That means shows that usually populate year-end lists like this - such as AMC's "Better Call Saul," FX's "The Americans," and HBO's "Silicon Valley" - won't appear here as we expect them to be exemplary.

With that in mind, here are 2016's 10 best TV shows: