Russell T Davies Says New Show ‘Tip Toe’ Is a ‘Reaction to Where Politics Is Heading’: ‘Queer Discourse’ Has Become ‘So Dangerous in a Way I Never Thought Would Happen Again’

Russell T Davies was asked about his upcoming Channel 4 show Tip Toe, starring Alan Cumming and David Morrissey, which is about a bar owner in Manchester and his long-standing neighbor who become embroiled in a feud.

via: Variety

“Doctor Who” and “Queer as Folk” writer Russell T Davies teased his upcoming Channel 4 drama “Tip Toe” at Series Mania on Wednesday, calling it “very much a reaction to where we are now.”

“Tip Toe” stars Alan Cumming and David Morrissey as feuding neighbors in Manchester and “explores contemporary threats facing the LGBTQ+ community” through their story. During a keynote address at Series Mania alongside producing partner Nicola Shindler — in which the powerful trailer for “Tip Toe” was unveiled — Davies said the series is a “reaction” to “where politics is heading, where all of us are heading, the anger that’s in the world now.”

“It’s a show in which every good deed goes punished. Everything goes wrong. Every text creates a nightmare, every DM, every voice note shouldn’t be sent. Everything everyone says, every attitude everyone has, starts a fire. Which is kind of like where we are now,” Davies continued. “Isn’t that happening just every day? And when it happens to our politicians, then God help us. And I thought increasingly, as a gay man in 2026, I felt that the queer discourse was becoming so hostile and so dangerous in a way that I never thought would happen again.”

The trailer showed how Cumming and Morrissey’s characters become entangled when Cumming, a gay bar owner, employs Morrissey, an unemployed construction worker, to fix up his bar. Morrissey’s character must confront his own homophobia and transphobia as Cumming forms a friendship with one of his sons, who is closeted.

Calling it a “great big suburban thriller,” Davies teased “Tip Toe” as his “angriest, darkest and funniest” series. “People will hate it, it’s going to get called woke on a colossal scale,” he continued. “But hooray, [I’m] happy to be called woke!”