‘I’m often called a sleeper on the internet it’s amazing’: inside Russell T Davies’ horror drama about the rise of hate | Television

Lspent the night on Manchester’s Canal Street, in the heart of the city’s most famous area, two neighbors are at war. The growing conflict between gay bar manager Leo (Alan Cumming) and friendly, next-door neighbor Clive (David Morrissey) shows no sign of abating. Leo’s screams are so loud they can be heard down the tunnel. The street is not closed to the public while their fight is going on, so you never know who is behind it and who is working at Leo’s bar, Spit & Polish, who is a regular, and who is in the crowd for their weekday party. In the background, the lights of the ambulance are flashing as the unchanging queens continue to fly to the next stop.

Russell T Davies’s Tip Toe, a new Channel 4 drama, looks at how political rhetoric, cyberbullying and lies can add fuel to a conflict between neighbours. The series’ location will not be lost on Queer As Folk viewers. The 1999 classic, which always featured scenes from Canal Street, followed the lives of three gay men, in ways that not only made homosexuality look good, but signaled a new era of tolerance. Viewers took from there that the future could be bright.

Now? Davies told me: “We’ve gone back to one of the worst things I can remember, maybe even worse, because now people know what they’re doing. “In the old days when we preached about visibility, if someone punched you in the face, or singled you out… you had an excuse to say they were ignorant. They were in the dark and we have to show up.

Davies says he never wrote more angrily in his life; The main question running through all five areas is that if integration and representation are now provided, what if some people don’t like what they see? The conflict begins with Leo asking Clive for help after he is trapped in his house, but Clive’s reluctance, his personality and his difficult thoughts make Leo, and the viewer, wonder where it ends – and the extent of his anger with Leo. The series is a powerful exploration of hate, and how LGBTQ+ people can find themselves in the firing line, with Trump’s election now giving permission to anyone who is angry to say what they want without consequence.

“This is not a gay problem,” says Davies, “but we are easy to look at it. Whatever the anger is, we are a target. The amount of time on the Internet I am called a groom and a babysitter (because of his support for trans rights) is amazing and maybe I can do something, except I think if I do something, I can make it worse. ” It is this fear that you can explain yourself that the show is called the name. “I used to walk into a room and go: ‘Ta-da!'” says Melba (Paul Rhys), Leo’s best friend and longtime bar drinker, in the first episode. “Now I’m just saying fingers.”

“We’ve all seen the change, we’ve all heard it,” says Cumming. He just filmed a scene in his bar in the middle of a busy show, even though everyone is dancing so they don’t interrupt the conversation, so all you can hear is the sound of the floor.

Cumming says Davies has a knack for reminding us of the past – as in It’s My Fault, his acclaimed 2021 drama about the Aids crisis – as well as writing about our present and future. There is a death in Tip Toe that may at first seem remote, but the strength of this play is how it grows. “It seems crazy what that means, but it makes it all make sense — and it’s pretty clear. It’s not black and white.”

For some, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, it may come as a surprise that a play should remind people of the issues that threaten them. He doesn’t agree.

“No, because I think that’s what plays do,” Cumming says. “Why do we treat the Greeks? Why do we read Shakespeare? They have something to say, and we should continue to hear similar stories and metaphors, because they are important to us as a culture, to hear and understand and reinterpret.”

If the pictures are not set on Canal Street, they are at Clive and Leo’s house. The tension between the two warring neighbors and the themes of Leo’s private life are fueled by a recent incident where Davies feels unsafe in his own home. Three years ago, a BBC Imagine documentary featured Alan Yentob explaining Davies’ background and his return to Doctor Who.. A fan who recognized his home stepped outside and began receiving letters from viewers. When a kind neighbor who had a key once let himself into the house without knocking on the front door, it scared Davies.

He said: “I was struck by how amazing it was and how your house felt. Then he began to think about how it must be for other people who have less responsibility. “If it’s happening to me, then how is it at a level where you have little security and no mobility and little money, really?”

From the opening outside their front door, you can tell that Clive doesn’t already care about Leo. An electrician with two sons, Clive’s bright personality means you’re sometimes not sure how bad his thoughts are. The third episode shifts the focus from Leo and his friends to Clive. He is unhappy in his family, does not earn enough money and is ostracized by his friends. She feels trapped and alone, but she can’t confide in her male friends. This show shows why at every crossroads, Clive has taken the dark path.

“Instead of having friends and reaching out, they get approval online,” says Morrissey. “They go: it’s those people. They’re taking your job. It’s reinforcing something they’ve always had. So they just get angrier and angrier.”

“We are very good to Clive in this,” says Davies. “He’s not a monster next door, even if you don’t feel sorry for Clive, the art of this series is to make you understand what made him have these feelings.

“It’s a very flexible piece,” says Morrissey. “I felt that there were many opportunities in the story where the characters, especially the characters in my story, could have taken a different path, made a different decision.” Russell gave him the fork on the way to play with and that made me very happy; about why this man chooses to go one way instead of another. That is a gift to an actor.”

Trying to get around the logic at stake here is a deliberate choice on Davies’ part. The staff at Spit & Polish are mostly young LGBTQ+ people. He sought advice from writer Juno Dawson, who worked with him on Doctor Who, about how to portray the show’s characters, including the beautiful and lovable maid Zee (Iz Hesketh). Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington), Leo’s best friend whom we see throughout the series, is a gender activist – she believes that natural sex cannot be changed from birth.

“I wanted people to speak differently in it,” says Davies. “I have friends who are gender neutral. When I’m online, you’re yelling and screaming and yelling at you. In real life, you have conversations, and we all sigh and compromise. That’s how the world works. That’s how the world stops working.” As the horrific violence nears the end of the series, Stephanie and Zee end up on the same side.

Cumming says that filming has been very difficult because of the story. “I have this kind of, I don’t know what it is, pain in my heart, in my chest, when I think about it,” he says. But it has given him hope for the future after working with many young people.

She said: “They were so fun, supportive and kind. It was very touching.”

Despite the title, the show also has an uplifting and romantic connection, shown through the young staff who work at his bar. “Happiness, happiness, passing happiness, Black happiness is a kind of resistance”, says Cumming. “It angers people who are unhappy or don’t understand why you can be happy when the world seems to be against you.”

“There’s a lot of excitement (in Tip Toe).” Next is a short pause: “Something else.”

Tip Toe starts on Sunday 31 May at 9pm on Channel 4.