'Fellow Travelers' review: Politics and closeted bedfellows in 1950s Washington, D.C.

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) is the political fixer for Sen. Wesley Smith (Linus Roache), a prominent opponent of Sen. Joe McCarthy (Chris Bauer) and Roy Cohn (Will Brill), who are now targeting "subversives and sexual deviants" — homosexuals — in government. 

Fuller then meets and falls in love with Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey, "Bridgerton"), who happens to work in McCarthy's office. Potentially awkward (make that potentially explosive) "Hawk" makes certain their love affair is kept secret, most especially from Sen. Smith's daughter, Lucy (Allison Williams), who he will eventually marry. Only his close friend, newspaper reporter Marcus Gaines (Jelani Alladin), knows his secret because he is also a "fellow traveler" (so to speak). This is based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon and created by Ron Nyswaner ("Philadelphia.") 

MY SAY Sepia tone — beware the sepia tone. Deceptively comforting and warm, it's now TV's signature of the past, usually reserved for a period piece set during the 1950s, when hairdos soared, car tail fins were long and we left it to Beaver. An innocent time in some memories, the sepia tone on TV insists otherwise: The '50s were an era of deceit, persecution, injustice, prejudice and paranoia. Careers were lost and lives ruined, all crushed under the Big Lie. Sen. Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, we're talking about you over most of these eight hours.

"Fellow Travelers" is set in sepia tone — guess you've already figured that out — and it spreads over these hours like a taupe-colored haze, creating a world (and vibe) that is both seductive and disturbing. The Washington, D.C., of "Travelers" is a sepia-toned cesspool, where good men die like dogs and the craven are rewarded with long careers and country club memberships. That "Travelers'" putative hero, Hawk Fuller, is one of the craven makes this eight-parter even more compelling.

There's a lot of Don Draper in Hawk, with that square-cut jaw and that perfect hairline. Bomer's Hawk isn't conventionally handsome, but obscenely handsome. While he turns heads, he's uninterested in most of them. Like "Mad Men's" Draper, he's licentious, but hides behind a screen (or two) of carefully constructed lies. In fact, he's supremely gifted at lying, although he's not simply "closeted." Rather, he's compartmentalized his entire world, with everyone in their place, and everything, too. His emotions are reserved for just one man. That man, a lapsed Catholic, is both infatuated and exasperated. Little wonder why.

"Fellow Travelers"' is a true TV rarity — a nuanced love story between two men that spans eight episodes, or four decades, from the "Lavender Scare"' through the AIDS epidemic. Their sexual encounters are particularly graphic, which is also unusual for a series that aspires to a mainstream audience. Some viewers may (or will) be shocked, others offended. Yet "Travelers" presents these scenes almost as a gauntlet: This is how these lives are lived so deal with it.

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. TV's most compelling, most resonant, characters of the past 10 years have been women, so the absence here feels jarring, or at minimum, a missed opportunity. A shame because "Travelers" gets so much else right.

BOTTOM LINE Lots of fine performances, but something (someone) is missing.