Alan Cumming and David Morrissey in ‘Tip Toe.’ (Photo courtesy of Channel 4/Starz)
Whenever a new project comes from queer Welsh screenwriter and producer Russell T. Davies – who created the original “Queer As Folk” in 1999 before spearheading the revival of the classic BBC sci-fi series “Dr. Who” as head writer and showrunner in the mid-2000s – it generally leaps to the top of every queer “must watch” list, and with good reason.
A genuinely versatile creative force who can move easily between genres without losing the core of humanity that keeps us engaged, he’s particularly known for his unequivocal, unsentimental, and always fearlessly candid narratives about queer life, set within a social context that’s barely tolerant, at best. He has a knack for capturing both the transient beauty and persistent hardships that seem to define our beleaguered community. His most recent such endeavor, 2021’s “It’s a Sin,” took us back to the harrowing years of the AIDS epidemic, following a group of gay young Londoners as the disease – and the societal homophobia that surrounded it – wreaked its merciless havoc, even as they began to break free from their closets and embrace their queer identities; and while it may have broken our hearts, it was also somehow empowering, a tale that reminded us not just of what we lost, but of what we have survived.
His latest miniseries, however, takes place in the here and now, and it offers a markedly bleaker assessment of the state of things.
“Tip Toe,” which appeared on the UK’s Channel 4 last summer, made its debut on U.S. screens via the Starz streaming service on Oct. 2, and it lets us know from its first few minutes that things are not going to end well; that’s not a spoiler – it’s a warning, because if you’re looking for a happy ending, you’re not going to find it here.
A tale of resurgent and emboldened homophobia in a modern-day Britain where open hate for the queer community has surged at an alarming rate, it’s the story of two men whose intertwining destinies feel almost like a tragic accident of fate. Leo (Alan Cumming) is a Gen-X AIDS survivor who has become a beloved figure in Manchester’s queer community, the owner of a popular gay bar that has always been a safe space for the queer, trans, and questioning souls who are struggling toward self-acceptance; his next-door neighbor, Clive (David Morrissey), is a working-class electrician with a floundering marriage and two sons who live secret lives he knows nothing about. He’s an old-school “macho man” whose ingrained misogyny and homophobia have grown increasingly unfiltered with the rise of online “culture war” rhetoric; and while there’s a kind of forced “neighborly” friendship between himself and Leo, there’s also a clear-cut line of judgement – on both sides – that gives their interactions a sense of barely concealed hostility.
When Leo is locked out of his apartment after a messy hook-up gone wrong, Clive comes to his rescue, but uses the opportunity to impose himself on Leo’s privacy. He levies the situation into an opportunity for work – an electrical revamp of Leo’s bar, where he makes no secret of his disdain for the queer “lifestyle” – and the tension between them continues to build despite Leo’s best efforts at being polite. The escalation reaches a boiling point when the secrets and lies in his own household lead Clive to suspect Leo of being a sexual predator, turning their precarious relationship into a minefield of hostility and inevitably pushing both men into a confrontation that will end in a shocking act of violence.
It might go without saying that “Tip Toe” is not the kind of show most of us would watch “for fun.” Russell’s script starts the relationship between its two antagonists at the threshold between a simmer and a boil, and shows us the outcome before either of them has even said a word, so it’s mostly impossible to avoid the sense of dread that hangs over everything that comes after. This is not a weakness; instead, aided by Peter Hoar’s masterful direction, it gives the show’s five episodes a slow build of tension that keeps us watching with morbid fascination, like the scene of a horrible road accident we’re forced to drive past in slow motion. We’re allowed to feel some hope along the way – after all, we’ve only had a glimpse of what is to happen, and there are other characters with storylines in which we can become invested along the way – but it’s a kind of grim hope, and it perfectly captures the fearful cultural zeitgeist-of-the-moment that the series is ultimately about.
The characters, too, are richly drawn and layered enough to avoid a simplistic “good guy/bad guy” dynamic. Clive is a brute – arrogant, uncivil, and forcefully antagonistic with a hair trigger that responds to anything or anyone that doesn’t meet his approval – but there’s enough broken humanity underneath all that to allow us to see a glimmer of potential for redemption. Likewise, Leo is mostly good-natured and likable, but he has an arrogance of his own, as well as some bitter resentments (most of them related to his ex-husband Curtis played by Charlie Condou), who left him for a woman), which – more than occasionally – surface to provide him with some ugly moments.
There are others, too; Melba (Paul Rhys), Leo’s gender-bending longtime bestie, who sees the growing danger in the world around them and voices it with the resigned stoicism of a reluctant Cassandra; Steph (Elizabeth Barrington), Leo’s straight friend who is not afraid to let him know when he’s too full of himself; Saul (Joseph Evans), Clive’s 20-something son who has evolved a more tolerant and easy-going outlook than his father, and teenaged George (Jackson Connor), Clive’s other son, whose struggles with his own identity take him on a roller-coaster ride of conflicted emotions; Marie (Pookie Quesnel), the wife who despises Clive but is unable to escape her unhappy existence with him; and Zee (Iz Hekseth), Leo’s employee who is trying to choose a name for herself after coming out as trans – along with a variety of other young, queer supporting players who have found refuge at the bar. All of them are written with depth and nuance, even those who remain more or less in the background, and brought to life through excellent, measured performances.
It is, however, Cumming and Morrissey who give the show its irresistible pull, their complex, bristling characters endowed with a palpable authenticity that makes us forget they are merely actors playing roles. They fully inhabit these two thorny men, creating a dynamic between them that feels like a force of nature, and it’s they who provide the terrible power that keeps us from looking away, no matter how much we might occasionally want to.
That’s a good thing, because “Tip Toe” is less a television event than it is a grim reminder that being “out” may no longer be as safe as we were finally beginning to think it was – and just because the alarm bell is coming from the UK, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t heed its warning on our side of the Atlantic, too.
The National LGBT Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: NationalLGBTMediaAssociation.com.
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