Fellow Travelers

Magnificent. .... “Fellow Travelers” cycles through many time periods and historical LGBTQ markers — all vividly brought to life. But first and foremost, this is a love story, one that breaks your heart.

Equal parts political thriller and steamy, doomed romance, “Fellow Travelers” proves to be an addictive yarn that, despite its period setting, feels vital and relevant in 2023 America.

It’s not just the sex that makes Fellow Travelers so great. It’s also the show’s ability to use wildly erotic fornication as a tool to increase its emotional resonance. The eight-episode limited series looks and feels like classic prestige TV, earning all eight hours of its runtime thanks to cunning writing, terrific editing, and some of the best lead performances of the year. This is can’t-miss television, brought back from its shallow grave.

A complex, intimate, captivating and visually stunning portrait of anguish and desire.

Showtime’s lively, insightful, and often devastating historical drama. .... Nested within a case study of gay political life in the second half of the 20th century are eight episodes of gorgeous romantic drama in a medium that rarely seems suited to the genre.

The love between Tim and Hawk is never confused or abandoned for another plotline but woven into the show's other themes expertly. This is one of the best miniseries of the year.

Unlike romances that wither on the vine whenever their leads pry themselves off each other, “Fellow Travelers” holds its grip on the audience throughout its eight-hour run.

The limited series works best in the ’50s and the ’80s, when the writers decide to strip away any unnecessary minor characters and, instead, keep the focus on Hawk and Tim’s inextricable connection. But all in all, this is the kind of devastating love story for the ages, brought to life with the undeniable talents of Bomer and Bailey, that will stay with you long after the end credits roll.

A fascinating historical drama. .... Bomer is especially effective, tapping a darker vein than we typically see. [6 - 26 Nov 2023, p.8]

Bomer and Bailey make a great team through all of it, and they prevent some of the weaker material, such as the 1960s war-protest plot, from dragging the series down.

What most satisfies here is the unpredictable way these men’s stories develop across all that history. .... The series’s greatest achievement is its commitment to its characters as characters — dwelling gently on their peculiarities and inconsistencies and never letting them become allegories for larger struggles.

It’s not particularly groundbreaking in terms of the story it’s telling, but that doesn’t make it feel any less necessary.

Anchored by its strong lead performances, “Fellow Travelers” delivers a closing emotional wallop with its look at the initial governmental indifference surrounding the AIDS crisis, and all the struggles that have followed, up to and including the present. The only quibble would be the character makeup, which doesn’t quite indicate the passage of time.

“Fellow Travelers” occasionally delves into treacly melodrama and has some borderline cringe-inducing dialogue and overly symbolic visuals. But on balance this is a beautifully shot and emotionally resonant story about a great love that was never allowed to fully flourish because of the bigotry and ignorance and wholly idiotic homophobia of mid-20th century America.

The final three episodes chart the characters' lives through the tumult of the Vietnam War protests in the '60s, the burgeoning gay rights movement in the '70s, and the emergence of the AIDS epidemic in the '80s. .... This somewhat didactic detour dilutes the emotional strength of Travelers' back half, but the bittersweet allure of Hawk and Tim's ill-fated connection sustains until the end.

Mainly, though, Bomer and Bailey are the drawing cards. They can’t entirely overcome some of the fundamental issues with how Fellow Travelers has attempted to move through time, and to mix fact with fiction, but they make the fictional part feel real, and poignant.

Fellow Travelers is by turns vital and stodgy, with passionate, emotional elements — stars Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey and Allison Williams are consistently compelling across eight hours — in conflict with by-the-numbers storylines.

If the ending veers toward the trauma buffet that pop culture has finally done away with, it's offset by the swoony love story that grounds the show.

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.

Yet as good as "Travelers" often is — the performances of Bomer and Bailey in particular — something is missing. There are no female characters of any particular substance or depth. A few arrive, then go, while Williams' Lucy is mostly a sketch of the "long-suffering" variety over too many of these hours.

The series could afford to be a little boring now and again, not like a bad TV show, but in the way life is much or most of the time, in between the towering highs and abysmal lows — where “Fellow Travelers” largely lives.

It provides enough background so you’ll understand why each character acts the way they do and will make you reflect at least a little on how cruel society has been to our community. However, it prefers to give the spotlight to and downplay the actions of a character that’s problematic at best to the detriment of giving space to other stories — something that an eight-hour series should certainly have room for.

The performances are respectable, the aesthetics are elegant and assured. Fellow Travelers has the makings of a sharp, rewarding series, one that blends intellectual sophistication with the swoon and heartbreak of a romantic epic. But the show is determined to become a cursory civics lesson on top of all that, filling itself with pat lines of exposition in which characters make boilerplate statements about the state of injustice.