Now TV: Six of 2017's best box sets

Here are some of the top picks for new and returning shows coming to Sky's streaming service Now TV this year:

Girls

HBO's smash-hit Girls returns for its sixth and final season in February. The show, which follows the lives of four young women living in New York, has been described by the New York Times as the "millennial generation's rebuttal to Sex and the City".

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A full-length trailer for the upcoming series shows Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Chelsea Peretti making an appearance as an editor interested in hiring Hannah Horvath (Dunham). Matthew Rhys, star of the spy thriller The Americans, will also join the cast in an unknown role.

Season six is out in February

Scandal

Season six of the political drama Scandal has been fraught with problems from the start, with the film shoot having to be rescheduled and rumours of the show being delayed and even axed to accommodate Donald Trump's inauguration. However, the show, which is inspired by George W Bush's administration press aide Judy Smith, will return to our screens at the end of the month.

Kerry Washington stars as Olivia Pope, who runs a crisis management firm and was last seen at loggerheads with the general secretary of the White House in season five.

Season six is out later this month

Elementary

Sherlock Holmes returns with a twist: his sidekick is a woman, Dr Joan Watson, played by Lucy Liu, and he is solving crimes in modern-day New York. Trainspotting star Jonny Lee Miller takes the leading role. In the opening episodes we discover he has fallen from grace in London and his wealthy father is forcing him to live with a sober companion – Dr Watson – following a battle with drugs. Watson, a former surgeon, turns out to be a handy adviser and astute protege.

The show is now in its fifth season, with the duo continuing to crack the NYPD's impossible cases.

Series five episodes are being released weekly

Fortitude

Sky Atlantic is taking viewers back to the fictional Arctic town of Fortitude for a second season of its chilly psychological thriller.

The first series took fans on a wild journey involving a polar bear attack, gruesome murders and a number of Fortitude's residents losing their minds. So jam-packed was the show that Empire described the second half of the season as "a bit of mess". However, the magazine gave a rave review to the renewed show, saying that "lessons have been learned" and that it "looks stunning and is still brilliantly acted".

Series two is out later this month

Victoria

The first series of Victoria centres on Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne in 1837. The series, which stars Jenna Coleman, first premiered on ITV last year and is now available in full on Now TV.

While the first season involved Victoria's coronation and relationship with Prince Albert, we still have a long way to go in the life story of one of Britain's most important monarchs. "In the next series she faces the very modern dilemma of how to juggle children with her husband and her job," showrunner Daisy Goodwin has said.

Season one is out now

The Walking Dead

The highly anticipated season seven of The Walking Dead, one of the most popular shows on television, will return from its mid-season break at the end of the month.

The drama stars Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, who wakes from a coma to discover the world has been overrun by zombies. Lincoln has described the second half of season seven as the "exact opposite" of the first eight episodes, which saw some of the show's key characters killed off.

The second half of season seven is out later this month