By John Corrado

The new eight episode limited series Fellow Travelers (based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name) is a McCarthy-era period drama that is set against the fascinating political backdrop of the mid-20th century.

But the handsomely mounted Showtime mini-series, which comes to us from screenwriter and executive producer Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, My Policeman), is mainly focused on being a sweeping, decades-spanning love story.

Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Timothy Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey) are two closeted gay men who both work for the State Department in Washington at the height of the gay panic, and must keep their relationship a secret.

Hawk is a stoic, decorated war veteran, whose boss Senator Wesley Smith (Linus Roache) has become like a father figure to him, while Tim is a good, church-going Catholic boy. The two meet on election night for President Eisenhower in 1952, with Hawk helping get Tim a job working for Senator McCarthy (Chris Bauer) and lawyer Roy Cohn (an eerily good Will Brill) during their Communist show trials. This begins a sometimes volatile on-again, off-again affair between Hawk and Tim that continues over the next three decades, until 1986.

Their relationship is complicated by a variety of internal (Tim’s Catholic guilt is sensitively detailed in the early episodes) and external factors, with McCarthy expanding the scope of his investigation to root out “subversives” and “sexual deviants” in the federal government. Mixing historical fact and fiction, the story moves from Vietnam War protests, to the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic. Yes, this is another gay love story that deals in tragedy, but it finds enough beautiful grace notes throughout so as not to feel like trauma porn.

This is a sprawling, absorbing mini-series that remains consistently engaging across its eight roughly hour-long episodes, as it mixes Red Scare political intrigue, themes of internalized homophobia, and some genuinely steamy sex scenes. It’s grounded in a passionate love story that is sensitively performed by Bomer and Bailey, who share palpable chemistry together and both deliver what could be considered career-best work as they breathe life into these two characters.

The eight hour runtime allows the series to flesh out a variety of other supporting characters as well, including Hawk’s friend Marcus Hooks (Jelani Alladin), a Black reporter who hangs out with him at integrated night club the Cozy Corner, and Lucy Smith (Allison Williams, also doing career-best work), the high society daughter of Hawk’s boss, who later becomes his wife. The production offers solid period details, from the cinematography to the set design and costumes.

At times we do worry the show will lose focus as it spans decades and juggles multiple characters and storylines, constantly jumping back and forth in time between the 1950s to the 1980s. But the editing of the series finds a rhythm that keeps it relatively easy to follow, and the emotional final episode (“Make It Easy”) does an especially lovely job of bringing everything together as it nimbly spans multiple timelines over 67 minutes. Altogether, Fellow Travelers is a compelling and moving series.

As a side note, Fellow Travelers was filmed in Toronto last year, and I did some minor background acting work on the series, so it was fun to watch in this regard having been on set. I’m thankful for the experience, and I’ve tried my best not to let this bias my review.

Fellow Travelers will be available to stream as of October 27th on Paramount+ with Showtime, with new episodes weekly. It will be airing on Showtime beginning October 29th.