Russell T Davies’ brilliant new drama “Tip Toe,” which premieres Friday on Starz, begins with Leo Struther (Alan Cumming, exceptionally good), a gay Manchester bar owner, hanging dead from a lamppost outside his home, a woman screaming and neighbor Clive Goss (David Morrissey) breathing heavily on his porch. Then, like many series today, it goes back in time (10 days here) to tell the story that led them there.
And so you’re prepared for tragedy from the start, but not everything that happens in five episodes will be tragic – some of what we see will be sweet and even celebratory – and one can forget for a moment where this is all heading and even believe that what we’ve seen before will turn out differently.
The series starts off in a relatively light mood. Leo, chasing a one-night stand after stealing his laptop, realizes he’s locked himself out of his house and, dressed only in his underwear, goes next door to call his friend Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington) and ask if he can borrow a phone to bring her a spare key; Here we meet Clive, the Goss family, an unemployed electrician; his wife, Marie (Pooky Quesnel), who dislikes Clive; 16-year-old son George (Jackson Connor), gay and closeted; and her son, Saul (Joseph Evans), a docile and portly 25-year-old who lives at home, secretly makes money on OnlyFans and accepts everyone as they are. Leo and the Gosses have been living amicably apart for 14 years, but their lives are about to intertwine with disastrous results.
In an act of deliberate, uncomfortable friendliness, or a desire not to have to deal with Leo the next time he’s locked out, Clive makes a copy of Leo’s key and places a lockbox next to his door. (According to Chekov’s gun rule, a key copied in Episode 1 must be turned into the lock by any move that Davies later deems advantageous.) Later, Leo gives Clive a job in his bar.
Alan Cumming and David Morrissey play neighbors whose relationship turns violent in “Tip Toe.”
(Ben Blackall / Starz)
Leo’s bar Spit and Polish is located on Canal Street in Manchester’s well-established “gay village”. This is a safe space for employees and patrons; These include Zee (Iz Hesketh), who has been secretly sleeping at the bar, terrified of her new roommates since learning she is a trans woman, and former drag performer Melba (Paul Rhys, wonderful), who holds the end of the bar like Norm in “Cheers” and carries a torch for Leo.
From here things will generally go wrong, with a narrative of increasing misunderstandings – not in the sense of an innocent mistake, not just in the sense of getting to the wrong end of the stick (though that’s part of it), but as a contemporary habit of mind, blinkered, closed to facts but open to conspiracies. (Clive, a consumer of disinformation on social media, believes AIDS and COVID are fake); lives in fear.
Directed by Peter Hoar, it’s a rough watch but still beautifully crafted and finely executed, inspiring and depressing, by turns desperate and hopeful Davies has his points to make – it’s not subtle to hang the hero – but his dialogue carries a lot of weight in a light-hearted way; Long speeches ebb and flow, rise and fall like compressed game pieces. If there’s anything schematic about the arc, the characters in it are entirely human, Clive as much as Leo. They represent something bigger than themselves, but they also represent themselves.
Davies brought the endless variety of gay life to television with the 1999 series “Queer as Folk” (also set on Canal Street) and brought gender fluidity with the series “Doctor Who,” which he revived in 2005 and returned in 2023. (The Tardis is currently in limbo.) “Cucumber,” about middle-aged gay men, and “Banana,” about young LGBTQ+ individuals, are also set in Manchester, where Davies has lived recently. 1980s. “Tip Toe” was designed for an era of increasing homophobia and anti-gay violence. “The president of America gave these men permission to attack us,” Melba says, sitting with Leo by the canal late one night. He calls the series ‘the dark prophet’.
“It’s a storm, a tide, a huge tsunami. We’re in the middle of it right now… If you’d asked me in 1996, what do you think 2026 will be like, I would have said ‘glory days’… But they fooled us, didn’t they? They took us all out, and now we’re standing in the open for them to shoot us. I’d walk into a room and just go, “Ta-da!” Now I’m standing on my toes just in case.