Traveling companions: the series that talks about homosexuality in the times of McCarthyism

Watch a series like Travel friends makes us feel lucky to live in today’s world not because in 2023 there are no problems of discrimination and intolerance but because in the 1950s, when Senator McCarthy imposed his influence in America, undertaking a relationship with a person of the same sex it meant being put in prison and stripped of all respect and dignity. The terrorism exercised in McCarthy’s Washington was so acute that it pushed thousands of homosexuals to live in shadow and suspicion, looking with reluctance at the gaze of all those who could easily point out the ambiguity of certain attitudes, leading the authorities to undertake perfectly legal investigations into the so-called “deviance”, understood as an impending danger for the authority and honor of a nation. Hawkins Fuller and Tim Laughlin, the protagonists of Travel friendsthe miniseries created by Oscar nominee Ron Nyswaner and available from October 28th in exclusive on Paramount+they get to know each other precisely in this context of fear and violence, courageously choosing not to give up on the other to live their dream of love.

Hawkins and Tim are two very different men. The first, brilliantly played by Matt Bomer, he is a very well-regarded man in Washington also because of his medals in times of war while the second, played by Jonathan Bailey, that is, the protagonist of the second season of Bridgerton, is a shy idealistic and strongly religious boy. Although they apparently have nothing in common, the two like and desire each other even if one that could initially be mistaken for a simple one sexual understanding – Travel friends shows several risqué scenes, including one with socks in the middle that will delight genre fetishists – slowly gives way to a deeper feeling that will be forced to face the hostility of the politics carried out by McCarthy and Roy to “subversives and sexual deviants”. Beyond the period of McCarthyism, Travel friends has the merit of making use of the clandestine history of Hawkins and Skippy – this is the nickname given to Tim by his partner – embracing well four different decades of American history: the fifties, the Vietnam war protests in the sixties, the hedonism of the seventies and, finally, the AIDS crisis in the Eighties.

Using a clever reference between the past time and the present time identified with the 1980s, a period that shows us Hawkins married and with children as his father wanted and Tim forced to fight against “gay cancer”, Travel friends offers the raw and sincere story of a seemingly impossible love between two men that, if only they could, they would live a happy life together without anyone deciding for them. The dark shots and the pressing rhythm they immerse us in the terror of those years while also telling the humanity around the two lovers, seasoned with beautiful characters like Marcus, the black, homosexual reporter played by Jelani Alladin, and Lucy, Hawkins’ friend played by Allison Williams forced to sacrifice her partner to avoid being arrested for being a lesbian. Bomer, in addition to being the protagonist, is also the executive producer of the series who, now with delicacy and now with ferocity, manages to do perfect justice to the novel by Thomas Mallon from which the series is based, offering the public a product of the highest level which we hope all Paramount+ subscribers will catch up on as quickly as possible.