Jonathan Bailey’s Fierce Performance Drives Showtime’s Period LGBTQ Drama Fellow Travelers

For all the early buzz surrounding Showtime’s Fellow Travelers—the initial paparazzi photos of stars Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey filming a shirtless scene frolicking on a beach together, reports of groundbreakingly authentic sex scenes and complex power dynamics, a forthright presentation of a dark period in queer history—the series itself is surprisingly old fashioned. In fact, it often feels like a throwback to a very different time in television: a prestige limited series with an obvious social message, full of the sort of dramatic scenes destined to be recut for Emmy nomination reels. Its serious tone and pace can sometimes feel plodding (and the show occasionally finds itself overly entangled with its least interesting subplots) but it’s awfully hard to argue with the importance of its subject matter or discount the righteous fury that threads throughout almost every aspect of its story. 

It’s easy for many to forget that it really wasn’t all that long ago when the simple act of loving someone of the same gender caused many to face open persecution by their government, neighbors, and even family members, or to be denied basic healthcare and simple kindness when decimated by a deadly disease. Fellow Travelers is unflinching in its portrayal of these uncomfortable and often horrific moments that, quite frankly, our modern-day society would clearly like to forget happened in the first place. But attention must be paid, particularly when it feels as though many of those hard-fought-for rights are once again under attack. 

One part love story, one part political thriller, and one part historical drama, Fellow Travelers follows the story of Hawkins Fuller (Bomer), a worldly State Department official, and Tim Laughlin (Bailey), a devout Catholic and new college graduate who arrives in the cutthroat world of Washington, D.C. politics, naively hoping to help change the country for the better. The two meet cute at an election night party on the eve of the 1950s Lavender Scare, just as Senator Joseph McCarthy began purging gays and lesbians from government jobs, stoking a national moral panic around homosexuality. Their flirtation turns into an intoxicating sexual connection, which becomes something much more intimate and lasting, despite the dangers, challenges, and other relationships that pass in and out of both their lives. 

Despite the novel on which the series is based being set in one time period, Fellow Travelers follows a split timeline format across its eight episodes, spinning Hawk and Tim’s love story across multiple decades and through pivotal moments of queer history. The waxing and waning of their relationship across time, and the ways both men change and grow in the gaps between the moments they steal together are deftly handled, even as the series shifts between the 1950s and the 1980s and all the years in between—from life in the Castro of Harvey Milk’s San Francisco to the decadent parties of Fire Island and the nationwide terror of the AIDS crisis. As the years pass, a closeted Hawk builds a family with senator’s daughter Lucy Smith (Allison Williams), while Tim searches for meaning in everything from his faith to political activism. 

But while Hawk and Tim’s romance is the central thread that binds the series together, it is not the only relationship the series attempts to explore. Marcus Hooks (Jelani Alladin) is a Black queer journalist covering the Senate beat while facing discrimination in everything from the types of newspapers he’s allowed to write for to the clubs he’s welcome to attend. Struggling to figure out how to be a Black gay man in a world that is openly hostile to both those identities, he finds himself in an unexpected relationship with Frankie Hines (Noah J. Ricketts), a drag performer working at an underground D.C. gay bar. Though their lives twine through and around Hawk and Tim’s, their relationship reflects their very different experiences of the world. And while Hawk’s marriage may look picture perfect from the outside, he and Lucy are both hiding key pieces of themselves from one another. 

The series is at its best in its earliest episodes, which, unsurprisingly, are those that feature the early days of Hawk and Tim’s relationship, as the pair attempt to navigate what they mean to one another and where (or even if) they might fit into each other’s lives. The long shadow of McCarthyism, which is present in everything from televised public hearings to government workers informing on colleagues they believe to be homosexual, adds an almost unbearable tension to even the simplest of scenes, and Fellow Travelers is forthright about the compromises and dangers faced by queer people in this time period. (And that don’t always seem as different from today as we might like to believe.)

Bailey, in particular, is a wonder throughout, and his performance is ultimately the series’ beating heart. Running the gamut from wide-eyed naiveté to furious rage, his Tim is a man in search of his own truth, struggling to reconcile his faith and sexuality, accept himself for who he is, and to find a space in which his feelings for Hawk are allowed to fit. Vulnerable, warm, and righteous by turns, Bailey gets more overtly dramatic material than Bomer does and makes the absolute most of it. Fellow Travelers also smartly takes the depth of Tim’s belief seriously, and his palpable longing for a world where he is free to love both God and Hawk is never treated as a joke, or some sort of cautionary tale about Catholic guilt. 

Bomer’s role is less showy, but it is no less complicated, with much of Hawk’s desire, fear, or longing conveyed with little more than small changes in facial expression or bedroom demeanor. His character is not a particularly easy man to like: Hawk is capable of both deep selfishness and surprising cruelty, both in and out of the bedroom, and there are moments it can feel as though Tim might well be better off away from his influence. But it is the surprising intimacy that grows between them—much of which is reflected through changing sexual dynamics—that pushes Tim toward his true self. 

Fellow Travelers isn’t always a particularly easy watch—it’s a love story, to be sure, but it’s also a tragedy, a story of loss and regret and what-ifs that serves as a necessary reminder of how far we’ve come in terms of the fight for LGBTQ rights, told through the story of two men whose lives would likely have turned out much differently if they’d been born a few short decades later. It’s not particularly groundbreaking in terms of the story it’s telling, but that doesn’t make it feel any less necessary. 

Fellow Travelers premieres on streaming on Friday, October 27, and on-air on Sunday, October 29 on Showtime. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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