Ron Nyswaner, the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated screenwriter, can still recall a chance meeting on a beach more than 50 years ago. Then a teenager and a self-described “Jesus freak,” he’d come to Ocean City, N.J., to attend a Youth for Christ conference. That young man asked him to speak in tongues — it was an invitation to religious ecstasy and nothing more. Moving back and forth from the early 1950s to the late ’80s, “Fellow Travelers,” based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, is a précis of 20th-century queer history viewed through a turbulent relationship between two men. Jonathan Bailey (“Bridgerton”) plays Tim Laughlin, a milk-drinking, God-loving naïf who dreams of working for Senator Joseph McCarthy.

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Persons: Ron Nyswaner, he’d, Nyswaner, ”, Thomas Mallon, Matt Bomer, Mike ”, Hawkins Fuller, Hawk, Jonathan Bailey, Tim Laughlin, Joseph McCarthy Organizations: Christ, “, Paramount, Showtime, State Department Locations: Ocean City, N.J, Manhattan’s Soho