Showtime has dropped the official trailer for Fellow Travelers, and it’s poised to be one of the cabler’s biggest hits of the year.
Headlined by Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer, the limited series premieres October 27, 2023.
Episodes will air one day later in the UK, Australia, Latin America, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria on Paramount+.
Fellow Travelers was created for television by Oscar® nominee Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, Homeland).
The series also stars Jelani Alladin (The Walking Dead World Beyond), Allison Williams (Get Out, Girls), and Noah J. Ricketts (American Gods).
Based on the novel by Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers is an epic love story and political thriller chronicling the clandestine romance of two very different men who meet in McCarthy-era Washington.
Bomer plays charismatic Hawkins Fuller, who maintains a financially rewarding, behind-the-scenes political career.
Hawkins avoids emotional entanglements – until he meets Tim Laughlin (Bailey), a young man brimming with idealism and religious faith.
They begin a romance just as Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn declare war on “subversives and sexual deviants,” initiating one of the darkest periods in 20th-century American history.
Over the course of four decades, we follow the lives of our five main characters – Hawk, Tim, Marcus (Alladin), Lucy (Williams), and Frankie (Ricketts).
The series follows them as they cross paths through the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, the drug-fueled disco hedonism of the 1970s, and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, while facing obstacles in the world and themselves.
Bomer and Nyswaner executive produce with Robbie Rogers (All American, My Policeman) and Dee Johnson.
Daniel Minahan (Halston, American Crime Story: Versace) executive produces and also directs the first two episodes.
The promo plays up the chemistry between Bailey and Bomer as they bring this secret relationship to life.
We see Hawkins go through a horrifying ordeal when he’s asked questions with a lie detector as he’s asked about his relationships, including whether he’s had physical contact with a man.
It’s unnerving watching these questions be asked because the rest of the promo highlights what can only be described as a witch hunt.
We’ll be covering this series with a spoiler-free pre-review and weekly episodic reviews, so stay tuned for more coverage.
