It's all about the pilot episode - in terms of positioning a show for a TV audience, working out the chemistry between the cast members and promising something special for a whole season.
Get it wrong and you can lose your audience instantly, with TV execs notorious for canning the most promising of shows following a less than rapturous reception to those first few reels of footage.
Fortunately, for these shows, the opposite was true, with wit, outstanding action and striking performances all ensuring that viewers wanted lots more of the same, often for years.
Prime Amazon's 'The Man in the High Castle' has received one of the most positive welcomes from viewers and critics alike, receiving a 96% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes for its first demanding received positive reviews from critics. But it's not the first show to enjoy a rapturous reception... here are some more that had us from the get-go.
The TV Shows With The Best Pilots
Homeland(01 of08)
When 'Homeland' burst on to our screens back in 2011, it was an instant hit, with sweaty palm-inducing storylines, clever script and performances from Damien Lewis and Claire Danes. Its pilot episode focuses on the return of Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Lewis) following eight years as a prisoner-of-war in Afghanistan. While Brody’s return is welcomed and he is celebrated as a hero, bi-polar CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Danes) believes Brody to be a spy acting for al-Qaeda. For five seasons and counting, the show has kept audiences gripped with its prescient account of the world's fight against terror.
Breaking Bad(02 of08)
The show first aired back in 2008 and is widely considered one of the greatest TV shows of all time. In 2013, it entered the Guinness World Records as the highest rated show of all time and when its final episode aired in 2013 the series was among the most-watched cable shows on American television. The show follows struggling high school chemistry teacher Walter White, played superbly by Bryan Cranston, who together with his former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) produces crystal meth to help secure his family’s financial future when he is diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. Another favourite on the awards circuit, over its five season reign 'Breaking Bad' picked up a plethora of awards including two Golden Globes and sixteen Primetime Emmys.
Man in the High Castle(03 of08)
In January of this year, Amazon released a pilot episode for their new original series The Man in the High Castle. The pilot was a huge success and was crowned the most-watched since the original series development programme began. Produced by Ridley Scott, the series is based on the 1962 novel of the same name and explores a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. Set in the 1960s where the United States has been split into three parts, The Japanese state of the Pacific States of America, a Nazi state that comprises of the eastern half of the former United States, and a neutral zone which acts as a buffer between the two areas, known as Rocky Mountain States. Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, Luke Kleintank, Rufus Sewell and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa star as the shows central characters.
Game of Thrones(04 of08)
The show first graced our screens back in 2011 and proved to be compulsive viewing from the start. Based on the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' fantasy novel series by George R.R. Martin the show features a huge ensemble cast including Sean Bean, Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage and Kit Harington. Set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, it chronicles the struggles among the realms noble families for control of the Iron Throne. Not for the faint hearted the series requires an element of concentration thanks to its sprawling cast believed to be the largest on television. During the production of the third season there were a mammoth 257 recorded cast names! Five seasons in, we’re still learning through cut throat casting choices that no character is safe from a premature death, and the show now has 26 Primetime Emmy wins to its name.
The Walking Dead(05 of08)
Based on Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard’s comic book of the same name, 'The Walking Dead' first hit our screens in 2010. Now in its sixth season, with a seventh confirmed for autumn 2016, the show has proved to be hugely popular. Leading the cast is British actor Andrew Lincoln who plays sheriff deputy Rick Grimes who awakes from a month long coma to find a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies. In the build up to the show’s pilot titled “Days Gone Bye” the creators invested heavily in advertising and coordinated zombie invasion events in key cities including New York, Washington D.C, London and Madrid. The hype did not go unnoticed and when the show aired in the US it had over five million viewers making it the most-watched series premiere in its network’s history.
House of Cards(06 of08)
With Hollywood heavyweight Kevin Spacey at the helm, 'House of Cards' was always going to be a hit. An adaptation of the BBC mini-series of the same name and based on the novel by Michael Dobbs, all thirteen episodes of the first season premiered on Netflix back in 2013 and a fourth series has now been confirmed for 2016. With a backdrop of present day Washington D.C, the show follows Frank Underwood (Spacey) a democrat and House Majority Whip, who with the help of his wife Claire (Robin Wright) constructs an elaborate plan to get himself into a position of greater power. With standout performances from both Spacey and Wright the show’s opening season was heavily praised, receiving nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations, the first original online-only television series to receive major Emmy nominations.
Lost(07 of08)
Thanks to its big cast and filming primarily on location in Hawaii, this show's production was infamously expensive with the pilot episode alone costing a whopping $14 million. The episode was split across two parts and directed by J.J. Abrams, writing credits went to Abrams alongside Jeffrey Lieber and Damon Lindelof. With such a strong creative team behind it, 'Lost' is still a popular TV show eleven years after it first aired. Over its six seasons and 121 episodes, 'Lost' had viewers hooked. With elements of science fiction and the supernatural, the show centres on the survivors of a passenger jet crash which was flying between Sydney and Los Angeles but crashes on a mysterious tropical island. The show features a strong ensemble cast including Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Jorge Garcia and Naveen Andrews.
The West Wing(08 of08)
From the first minutes of this political drama, which found Josh Lynam (Bradley Whitford) waking up to a morning of rancour following a TV altercation, and Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) discovering he'd "accidentally slept with a prostitute", it was clear we were in brand new, smart-talking, wit-cracking territory. And that was before Martin Sheen turned up and stole the show in a presidential role that was originally meant to be a cameo. Once again, we thankyou, Aaron Sorkin, for this and the years of joy that followed.