Though Showtime got some decent awards attention this year, their top miniseries ends just short of 2023’s wrap-up. Fellow Travelers is easily one of the year’s most meaningful and affecting news shows, appealing to fans of in-depth historical fiction world-building as much as casual romance fans moved by the lead performances. With eight episodes covering four decades of the United States’ persecution of homosexuals told in a heartrending, character-based manner, Fellow Travelers will disappoint only those unwilling to engage with its frank discussion of politics and homosexuality.
‘Fellow Travelers’ Premise
Hawkins Fuller, an established State Department official, randomly meets Tim Laughlin at a political party in Washington, D.C., and the two soon hit it off with secret rendezvous and growing attachments. Hawk knows how to play the political and sexual game, having a successful, growing career and hiding his homosexuality effectively. Tim, however, has strong Republican and religious ideals that increasingly clash with his budding feelings for Hawk. Over the next 30 years, political and personal strife make their intertwining lives a thrilling romantic drama.
Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey Excel in Their Co-Lead Roles
Writer and infrequent director Ron Nyswaner adapts an epic novel into this grand series, and his understanding of the story’s root in humanity that invested audiences in Philadelphia and was lost in My Policeman flows confidently through the lead actors. Doom Patrol‘s Matt Bomer and Bridgerton favorite Jonathan Bailey strike the perfect balance of passionate, emotional display and reserved intensity that charges every interaction in Fellow Travelers. Studios have long underutilized their potential for leading man greatness, and each of them showcases the dynamic nature required of a TV show performance you want to follow for eight hours.
Smart, Masterful Production Graces Each Era of Fellow Travelers
Another highlight of this Showtime miniseries is the work put into distinguishing each decade without resorting to much stereotyping. A worsening vindicative paranoia characteristic of the persecution of Communist ideals of the McCarthy era plagues Hawk and Tim’s initial meetings, and the AIDS crisis sharply cuts through their relationship as much as it does to the gay community in the 1980s. The teleplays always return us to the characters, never worrying about sensationalizing any aspect of the nuances of these eras.
Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer in ‘Fellow Travelers’
History of Queer History in Narrative Filmmaking
LGBTQ+ stories are at the height of their popularity, but their existence is nothing new. As early as the 1920s, German art movements and adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s plays made the burgeoning cinema world ripe for gay acceptance until countries hindered the moral content of art by law. Authentic stories by and about LGBTQ+ people have become increasingly more common in the last 50 years, with adaptations of E. M. Forster’s Maurice and the feminist masterpiece Orlando marking two prominent examples. Brokeback Mountain and Portrait of a Lady on Fire continued to honor the lengthy gay romance approach into the 21st century.
Fellow Travelers proudly sits alongside these films, telling a complete, grounded story of longing, understanding, and restrictions to one’s true self. Though the grandness stretches to its maximum in eight dense episodes of drama and lust, this is a world you will not want to leave, even when the characters’ pain is heartbreakingly great.
Fellow Travelers is streaming now on Paramount+ with Showtime.
