For the third consecutive year, HBO’s Game of Thrones has been named as the most-pirated TV show of the year, with Torrent Freak revealing that the season four finale of the epic fantasy series had more than 8 million illegal downloads via BitTorrent – some 3.1 million more than The Walking Dead in second place. Here’s a list of the top ten most downloaded TV shows of the year (for a single episode), with their US TV viewing figures in brackets…

1. Game of Thrones – 8.1 million downloads (7.16 million viewers)

2. The Walking Dead – 4.8 million downloads (17.29 million viewers)

3. The Big Bang Theory – 3.9 million downloads (18.24 million viewers)

4. How I Met Your Mother – 3.5 million downloads (13.13 million viewers)

5. Gotham – 3.2 million downloads (11.81 million viewers)

6. Arrow – 2.9 million downloads (3.92 million viewers)

7. Grey’s Anatomy – 2.8 million downloads (9.81 million viewers)

8. Vikings – 2.7 million downloads (3.56 million viewers)

9. Suits – 2.5 million downloads (2.8 million viewers)

10. South Park – 2.4 million downloads (2.4 million viewers)

SEE ALSO: The most pirated movies of 2014