Jonathan Bailey, Matt Bomer
“FELLOW TRAVELERS” (Showtime, Paramount+):
“Fellow Travelers” is the gay “The Way We Were” — an epic intimate romance spanning decades and peppered with political and cultural landmarks.
Not to mention the most graphic sex scenes this side of Pornhub.
Remember when straight people used to wonder just what it was that gay guys did to each other in the sack?
Wonder no more.
Ron Nyswaner’s 8-part adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s novel centers on the on-again, off-again obsession shared by the charismatic and impossibly handsome Hawk Fuller (Matt Bomer), a rising star in the U.S. diplomatic corps, and mensch-y Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey), a naive newcomer to D.C.
Hawk and Tim meet in the early ‘50s just as the government’s ranks are being cleansed of homosexuality by right-wing Sen. Joe McCarthy (Chris Bauer) and his Machiavellian sidekick and closet queer Roy Cohn (Will Brill).
The romance intermittently continues through Hawk’s marriage to a Senator’s daughter (Allison Williams) and Tim’s stint as a seminarian and anti-war activist.
Throughout the two men remain unlikely bedfellows…Hawk is an unapologetic hedonist skilled at hiding his homosexuality, while Tim is an idealist who outs himself fairy early on.
But like they say, you can’t choose who you love.
The yarn stretches into the 1980s, the Harvey Milk assassination and the rising AIDS crisis. At the same time the show’s mood shifts from furtive paranoia to proud self-acceptance.
Periodically the drama switches to the experiences of Marcus Gaines (Jelani Alladin), a black gay journalist chafing under the yoke of self-suppression.
Acting and production values are off the chart. But I wonder about the show’s time-bending narrative, zapping back and forth across the years. Sometimes it seems like obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation.
Still, “Fellow Travelers” packs a huge emotional wallop.
Natasha Lynne, Benjamin Bratt
“POKER FACE”(Peacock):
A little Natasha Lyonne goes a long way. After a while that Runyon-esque verbosity and self-referential hipness can wear thin.
“Poker Face” solves the problem by having its star appear deus ex machine-style halfway through every episode to solve a murder.
The premise: Charlie Cale (Lyonne) is on the run after crossing a casino-operating crime family. She’s persona non grata at the tables because she has been blessed/cursed as a human lie detector. She knows when another player is bluffing.
Each episode starts out with a different murder in a town into which Charlie has washed up.
One episode is about the members of a has-been punk rock band (Chose Sevigny is the snarling lead singer) who kill their drummer so they can claim writing rights to his song.
Another finds a woman and her brother-in-law murdering the husband, the founder of a Deep South barbecue empire who is threatening everything by going vegan.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a soulless white-collar criminal holed up in a snowbound motel in the Rockies and covering up a hit-and-run death.
Each situation is set up well before Charlie stumbles into the scene to solve the crime with her psychic ability. And to make matters even more interesting, she’s being followed on her cross-country flight by a mob enforcer (Benjamin Bratt).
“Poker Face” employs creative storytelling (just about every episode has an extended flashback to show us how we got to where we are) and the repartee from Lyonne is often screamingly droll.
David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Lancashire
“JULIA” (MAX):
The single best performance I’ve seen in recent months belongs to Brit actress Sarah Lancashire, who so fully embodies famed TV chef Julia Child that it’s less acting than alchemy.
Geeks for Brit TV know Lancashire as a lesbian headmistress in “Last Tango in Halifax” and as a long-suffering small-town cop in “Happy Valley,” both solid perfs but only an appetizer for the gluttonous feast that is “Julia.”
Now in its second season, “Julia” (created by Daniel Goldfarb of “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) is a deep dive into Child’s life, from the very creation of her TV show on a small Boston station to her worldwide fame.
But it’s as much about the private woman as it is the public icon. Her marriage to former CIA guy Paul Child (David Hyde Pierce) is examined on almost a molecular level.
And while Lancashire absolutely nails Julia’s mannerisms and vaguely ridiculous vocal patterns, what really blew me away is that her Julia is — wait for it — a sexual creature.
Middle-aged love is viewed here not as a joke but as a celebration. Who’d have figured?
There are plenty of sideshows reflecting the political and social ethos of the late 50s and early 60s.
Robert Joy and Fran Kranz are the station drones who give Julia a chance.
Isabella Rossellini is Julia’s traditionalist writing partner for the famous cookbook; Fiona Glascott is their editor, while Judith Light is both touching and infuriating as a doyen of publishing now circling the drain.
There are plenty more strong supporting players, especially Bebe Neuwirth as the Childs’ widowed best friend.
I used think of Julia Child as a sort of comic relief. But clearly there was a lot more to the lady.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 