[imagesource: Aaron Epstein / HBO Max]

Listen, we’re not trying to actively reduce your productivity by recommending series that you should watch.

Do so after hours, wedged in between load shedding outages, like an adult.

The BBC has done a ‘best of’ list, as has The Washington Post, and this time around it’s Vanity Fair stepping up to the plate.

The outlet has picked 15 shows from the first six months of 2022 (insert obligatory ‘where has all the time gone’ quip), many of which we’ve already featured.

I’ll try and skip those and let’s focus on three series, starting with Our Flag Means Death:

Thousands of fans making amazingly detailed fan art can’t be wrong, right? Yes, fan campaigns have gotten some well-earned eye rolls in recent years, but the enthusiastic energy behind HBO Max’s cheerful pirate comedy is testament to the power of this proudly queer bit of revisionist history.

Essentially a workplace comedy on the high seas, the ensemble includes standout supporting performances from newcomers like Vico Ortiz and Nathan Foad. But it was the slow-burn romance between Rhys Darby’s fussy gentleman pirate, Stede Bonnet, and Taika Waititi’s leather-clad Blackbeard that launched a thousand ships and recently earned the series a season two renewal.

Pirates? Kiff.

Slow Horses:

​​If you’re tired of efficient operatives displaying their fitness by running around picturesque locations and deploying cool gadgets, this witty, atmospheric drama was made for you. The disgraced spies of Slough House, first brought to life in novels by Mick Herron, have no resources except their brains and—in some cases—their desperation to escape secret agent purgatory (you get sent to MI-5’s crumbling Slough House if you screwed up).

Gary Oldman stars in it.

Enough said.

The Righteous Gemstones:

Season two of Danny McBride’s lusciously bonkers creation is deeper and more resonant than the first, and it’s got cool ninja assassins on motorcycles. There are too few go-for-broke comedies these days—insert 6,000-word think piece on the perils of trying to be funny in the social media age—but even if you come to Gemstones for the broad send-up of televangelism, the Arrested Development–level family dysfunction, or the homoerotic bodybuilding cult, you stay for subtler stuff, like the delicious writing, John Goodman’s empathy-inducing turn as the embattled patriarch Eli, and Edi Patterson’s brilliantly twitchy turn as daughter Judy.

I’ve dabbled and this one is worth getting through the first few episodes as it works its way up to full throttle:

Season two has its own trailer, which you can watch here.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers for those who haven’t yet watched the first season.

If three series to add to the list hasn’t quite hit the spot, you’ll find all 15 of  Vanity Fair’s picks here.

[source:vanityfair]