“You have a beautiful family, a beautiful life,” says one old friend to another. “I hope it was worth it.”
In “Fellow Travelers,” the Showtime limited series adapted from the 2007 novel of the same name, “it” means living in the closet, which has been professionally beneficial for the sleekly handsome Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) — it’s the 1980s and he’s about to take a diplomatic posting in Milan — but devastating on his soul.
We flash back 30 years to the ‘50s, when he meets and seduces the very earnest and very Catholic Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey) at a Washington, D.C., party. They fall in lust and then in love, all in secret, during Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare hunt for communists, which extends out to include gay people as well: The Lavender Scare. Any opportunity to remind audiences of the cruel depravity and hypocrisy of McCarthy and right-hand man Roy Cohn is aces in my book.
This matters because the two men in our central couple have government jobs on the line — Hawk works at the State Department, Tim is literally in the belly of the beast as a staffer in McCarthy’s Senate office. Their relationship is complicated (maybe even fueled) by the threat of exposure, but also because Tim wears his heart on his sleeve, whereas Hawk resists deep emotional connections. Maybe these differences would have doomed their romance regardless of the era.
Creator Ron Nyswaner (whose credits include “Philadelphia” as well as the Showtime series “Ray Donovan” and “Homeland”) has added in a new storyline, about a Black political reporter played by Jelani Alladin, who forms a long-term partnership with a drag performer he meets at a swanky underground gay club he and Hawk frequent. “Fellow Travelers” takes a similar approach to these portions as Amazon’s remake of “A League of Their Own,” creating a parallel narrative that gives the show’s Black characters their own lives and interests. Their stories may occasionally intersect with the show’s white characters, but their existence on-screen isn’t dependent on furthering those storylines.
Steamy, sad and stylish all at once, “Fellow Travelers” toggles back and forth in time. One episode is set in the ‘60s, when Tim is a war protester on the lam and Hawk is struggling to maintain his facade of domestic bliss (Allison Williams plays his wife, a role that’s similar to what Anne Hathaway was saddled with in “Brokeback Mountain”). Another episode takes place in the ‘70s, when Tim visits a drug-addled Hawk on Fire Island and rescues him from a midlife crisis.
But the show is strongest (and gives over most of its running time) to the portions set in the ‘50s, when Hawk’s Don Draper swagger and Tim’s boyish infatuation first collide.
Their relationship is defined by this uneven power dynamic. Earnest and wide-eyed, it takes Tim a surprisingly long time to become disgusted enough by McCarthy to quit his job. Hawk is older and he’s an operator. He christens his lover with the diminutive nickname “Skippy” and I cringed every time.
Their clandestine affair plays on this imbalance. “Who do you belong to?” Hawk implores mid-coitus and you can interpret that as kink, or maybe a deeper reflection of his obsessive need to be in control at all times.
The sex, on the scale of TV explicitness, is akin to what “Queer as Folk” was doing two decades ago, with a variety of positions and orgasms to be had. Some of it furtive and in public restrooms. Some of it in the relaxed setting of a private home. The washboard abs strike me as anachronistic — even Rock Hudson at his peak didn’t have the gym-enhanced physique of these fictional desk jockeys — but I doubt anyone is complaining. The show’s wigs are another matter.
The series is occasionally too mannered and presentational for its own good, but there’s real heat and chemistry between Bomer (“White Collar”) and Bailey (“Bridgerton”), who play around with this push-pull dynamic in interesting ways. Both Hawk and Tim are driven by restless desires. For carnal pleasures, but also proximity to power and influence. To make a difference. To find meaning.
It’s a story both intimate and not, and that largely comes down to the limitations embodied by a character like Hawk, who keeps everyone at arm’s length, lest he be found out. His most emotionally honest moment comes when he tells off his Waspy father on the guy’s deathbed. The elder Fuller has held a grudge ever since walking in on one of his son’s entanglements. You shoulda knocked, Hawk shrugs before turning heel, unmoved by the old man’s indignant demand for an apology.
Is television the ideal medium for novels? You’d think so, with episodes functioning like chapters of a book. There have been a raft of adaptations in recent weeks, from “Lessons in Chemistry” to “The Other Black Girl” to the forthcoming “Black Cake,” but I’m not convinced this is always the best format. Sometimes the extra running time just means more scenes. You don’t learn or feel more about the characters, or the world they inhabit.
That’s true of “Fellow Travelers.”
It’s mostly worth the journey anyway.
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‘FELLOW TRAVELERS’
2.5 stars (out of 4)
Rating: TV-MA
How to watch: 9 p.m. ET Sundays on Showtime (and streaming on Paramount+)
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