And the award for the most unrealistic TV cast goes to...

After analysing the data from the top 26 shows, we found that Paul Wesley who plays Stephen Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries has the biggest age gap among the top five main characters of each TV show - Paul Wesley is 19 years older than the character he portrays.

The most accurate casting for a character is Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown in Stranger Things. Both the character and the actor were 12 years old when the series began.

Looking at the data, here are the top 5 biggest differences in age:

Stephen Salvatore (played by Paul Wesley)

Here’s the most accurate castings where all the ages are exact:

Taking the five leading characters from each TV series, we were able to find the combined age for each show, and the age of the actors which portray them. The list is below, from the most different, to most accurate.

Dark is one of the most recent releases on the list (released on Netflix December 2017). The actors in this German web series only have a 1.5% age difference to their characters, giving them the most accurate casting.

The Vampire Diaries takes the top spot for the most unrealistic character to actor age gap. The cast of this show have a huge 54.95 per cent age difference to the characters they play. The characters on the show are vampires who are frozen in their young, human bodies, which seems ironic given how much older the cast seem to be!

Teen shows in particular have been casting older people to play them for a long time and the trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Take a look at some of the top adult actors who are older than their on-screen characters.

Elena Gilbert from The Vampire Diaries (played by Nina Dobrev)