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Wand open in a common country road. The boy is looking out the window. Wife – his mother? – he screams. Man – his father? – He is standing in the garden staring blankly into the future. The camera pulls back to reveal a shocking scene that cannot be read. Then we go back to 10 days in the past to begin to understand how they, and other statistics that happened, got here.
So, with bravura style, begins Russell T Davies’ new drama, Tip Toe. The man in the garden is Clive (David Morrissey), an electrician with two sons – 16-year-old college student George (Jackson Connor) and 25-year-old Saul (Joseph Evans), who helps him in the business when there is enough work around – and endures an unhappy marriage with Marie (Pooky Quesnel).
Ten days earlier, we find him helping his neighbor Leo (Alan Cumming), a proud and arrogant man who owns a place called Spit & Polish in Manchester’s Canal Street (an arrangement, of course, thanks to the talent that announced the arrival of RTD on TV in 1999, Queer as Folk). Leo is locked, pantsless, outside his house as he chases a one-night stand, who stole his laptop, from the street. Seventeen’s opposition to all of this can smell good on Clive as he lets Leo into his house to call his friend Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington) to come rescue him.
After this impressive opening, the rest of Tip Toe’s first five-hour set feels more like a box office hit than a drama. All the people’s topics are here. Stephanie, a daycare worker, arrives and tells the story of an immigrant who is older than she looks and takes care of girls at home, but who has to put her at the top of the adoption queue (“He’s an ID, you made it up”). Leo goes to work and is advised to take offense at the comments made by one of his transgender employees, Zee (Iz Hesketh), who appears to be being bullied by his Polish colleagues. Then Leo, his manager Judy (Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo) and the rest go to collect Zee’s things. Leo was surprised by the size of Zee’s room. “They all live like this, kids,” says Judy. “This is what we did to them.” Briefly later we have a drag queen at Spit & Polish sequestered on the floor as a student (“She knows where I live”) from the school where she teaches arrives; Leo’s friend Melba (Paul Rhys) jokingly reveals that she’s a Tory, then makes comments to Leo about the state of gay rights these days (“It’s back…you pay for drugged kids! The Trump administration is twisted (“he’s given these men permission to attack us”) and more.
Then there’s Clive, whose job offer to Leo while insulting him represents all kinds of deception (emphasizing that he doesn’t know that Saulo is running an OnlyFans account that targets women but is happy to accept anyone who registers for a salary, that George is gay and is afraid of coming out to his parents, and Marie on Friday – she’s been unfaithful. also revealed to be a workaholic AND a retired voter).
It doesn’t matter where you stand on this point – writing unedited articles in the mouths of your audience makes it agitprop, not art. It is boring and boring for the viewers.
Fortunately, Davies is too good of a legend to stick around for so long. With the second episode, he cleared his throat enough to start creating a story with his characters and let them express what they love most and not the other way around. It retains the tradition that made his other world / future pieces of color, Age and Age or With Sin, very powerful and moving, but the strings begin to intertwine, persistence builds and if at the end of the end it is not clear, everyone has worked hard to be as close to the truth and as reliable as possible. Cumming keeps the flamboyant, brooding Leo on the right side of likable and fun and Morrissey does his usual best with a bit of exposition.
It is three and a half stars, collected because of all the good and great things that have gone before.
Tip Toe is on Channel 4
