It's not too late to catch: The best TV shows of 2016

Better Call Saul
(Netflix)
Vince Gill's Breaking Bad prequel is the panoramically filmed tale of how reformed huckster Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) navigates his sad, troubled relationship with his resentful, superior brother (Michael McKean) and morphs into amoral criminal lawyer, Saul Goodman.Television is filled with brooding anti-heroes whose noble intentions are blighted by inner darkness. Saul/Jimmy is much more interesting than them. He's an anti-villain. His dark trajectory is undermined by inner decency.

The People Versus OJ Simpson: American Crime Story
(BBC2, currently on RTÉ1)
The Simpson trial was, in retrospect, the point at which America went mad, shed Enlightenment values and spiralled into 24-hour news cycles and reality-star obsessions. This is not lost on the writers of The People versus OJ Simpson, who somehow manage to balance the trial's dubious status as a camp pop-cultural event with its reality as a significant tragedy and moment in social history. John Travolta is excellent as celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro. And whoever plays Robert Shapiro's eyebrows is also excellent.

Trial of the Century
(TV3)
A fictional trial of the factual(ish) Patrick Pearse (Tom Vaughan- Lawlor). The first two episodes feature a gripping courtroom drama made up of dramatically intense, historically rigorous interrogations of Pearse's character and the meaning of our nation's revolution. The third bit was a daft celebrific jury discussion headed up by Pat Kenny, whom I believe to be a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party or possibly the Whigs.

Orphan Black
(Netflix)
BBC America's dark sci-fi show about a cloning conspiracy is so deftly plotted it's easy to forget that five of the main characters and several minor parts are played by one woman, the amazing Tatiana Maslany. If it was the 1970s, the union would put a stop to her quintuple jobbing. Thankfully we live in more atomised, late-capitalistic times, so we can watch all four amazing seasons on Netflix.

Happy Valley
(BBC1, Season 1 is on Netflix)
A compelling, multi-textured crime drama set in a drug-ravaged north of England community and featuring Sarah Lancashire as the best world-weary cop since Columbo. Okay, there's much more to her than Columbo – her life is marked by a complicated, existentially troubling tragedy. Writer Sally Wainwright's soap roots (she wrote for Coronation Street) can be seen in the way every character is granted dignified individuality and even the darkest acts of evil are offset by sweet moments of humanity.

Last Week Tonight and Full Frontal
(YouTube, after they air in the US)
Daily Show alumni John Oliver with Last Week Tonight and Samantha Bee with Full Frontal have shed the relative neutrality of their comedy-news mentor, Jon Stewart, to produce angry, sharp-edged lectures on public policy (debt, gun violence, the prison system, abortion, pensions). They both seem to be genuinely striving to change America and yet, somehow, they're still very funny.

The Rubberbandits Guide to 1916
(RTÉ1)
This was my favourite 1916- themed production. I'd like to see the Rubberbandits presenting a weekly current affairs show like Last Week Tonight, to be honest. I feel that only two Limerick rappers with plastic bags on their head can truly make our absurd nation explicable.

Grayson Perry's All Men
(Channel 4, available on 4OD)
There are a lot of men out there who are very angry and moody what with the weight of their ginormous genitals. This phenomenon is called "masculinity". The incisive, thoughtful Turner-prize-winning Perry is more empathetic towards extreme masculinity than I. He visits several bastions of maleness to try and understand men and his own complex relationship with gender and to create three moving and celebratory art works.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
(Netflix)
Tina Fey and Robert Carlock follow 30 Rock with the story about eponymous abductee (Ellie Kemper) having wacky technicolour adventures in the big city alongside an endearingly theatrical buffoon (Tituss Burgess) and a curmudgeonly criminal landlady (Carol Kane). You can watch it as a live-action cartoon, but there's also a subtext of defiant optimism and survival, if you need something more substantial.

Springwatch
(BBC2)
I love Springwatch and its obsessive surveillance of the fluffy, feathery, scaly murderous sociopaths of Britain's hedgerows, ponds and fens. What have we learned from it? That ducks, badgers, owl chicks, puffins and, possibly, bequiffed presenter Chris Packham, are all bastards and that we're probably right to dominate nature and subject it to our whims. That's the message I'm supposed to get, right?

Bob's Burgers
(Comedy Central)
Speaking of cartoons, Bob Belcher runs a burger shop with his excitable wife Linda and their three children – happily hapless Gene, guileless Tina and guiltless Louise. They have adventures. They cook burgers. They enter a remarkable number of competitions. Bob's Burgers is ideal for people who like hilarious burger-themed family drama (surely this is a genre on Netflix?).

Horace and Pete
(louisck.net)
Louis CK leaves his deconstructed indie sitcom, Louie, to self-fund a 10-episode play-for-today-style sit-trag (the opposite of a sitcom) about several generations of miserable men and women in a bar. It features CK, Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco and Alan Alda and although it contains traces of humour, all punch lines evaporate in the sad silences. It's brilliant and not like anything else.

Bojack Horseman
(Netflix - new season coming very soon)
A wealthy drug-addled celebrity (Will Arnett) has an existential crisis. He fears he isn't a good person, because, well, he isn't a good person. We delve into his sad, troubled past to see why. Bojack Horseman is genuinely moving and also very funny. Also, Bojack is a cartoon horse and dwells in a place where humans live alongside preposterous anthropomorphic animals (much like Dalkey).