"A man who knows how to land a dramatic punch": Kevin McKenna reviews Russell T Davies' 'Tip Toe'

Alan Cumming as Leo Struthers | Image: © Channel 4/Ben Blackall

Kevin McKenna MP

While I’m a massive fan of Russell T Davies, I’ve been putting off watching his latest drama for Channel 4, Tip Toe. Partly because I’ve not entirely recovered from the emotional onslaught that was It’s a Sin and its perfectly styled period piece exploration of the 1980s Aids epidemic. Mostly, however, because it tackles head-on some of the more disturbing social dynamics of the mid-2020s, and I know how hard his dramatic punches can land.

Tip Toe could be considered part three of an informal trilogy exploring the experiences of LGBT+ people in Manchester: Davies’ joyous celebration of Canal Street culture, Queer as Folk, and the mid-life crisis follow-on, Cucumber.

All three programmes feature different sets of characters orbiting around Canal Street’s bars. All feature people making seemingly small, if rash, choices that quickly lead to things spiralling out of control. Tip Toe speeds towards a particularly dark conclusion and, unlike the other two, doesn’t find a happy resolution for its protagonists after they reach their lowest point.

This isn’t a spoiler. RTD uses a conceit he’s employed more than once before, notably in the era-defining Doomsday episode of Doctor Who, where a character’s eventual death is revealed in the opening scene. Only, unlike Rose Tyler, there is no sci-fi ‘MacGuffin’ to protect Alan Cumming’s character Leo Struthers from a genuinely sickening fate. 

There is a more subversive conceit to Tip Toe in that, although the lives of those inhabiting the Canal Street scene are the fabric the tale is written on, its dark heart is bar owner Leo’s straight next-door neighbour Clive Goss, played with terrifying intensity by David Morrissey. Morrissey’s performance is a standout here, one of barely concealed anger and violence. All fuelled by his frustration at his own perceived lack of success, in his terms at least, at work and with his family. Even if Clive doesn’t gain the level of respect he feels he is due through his all-too-transparent dominance manoeuvres, the drama is propelled largely by the reactions of other characters to him.

Straight next-door neighbour Clive is played with terrifying intensity by David Morrissey

Clive’s story allows Davies to expound again on a theme that he has come back to repeatedly in recent work: the corrosive impact of online interaction and social media on individuals, and on society as a whole. All the characters in Tip Toe exist fluidly in a world that can’t really be described as virtual anymore, so thoroughly is it integrated into their lives. Capturing the online experience has been a challenge to portray well on TV, as our relationship to this still-evolving technology develops. Tip Toe manages to integrate it pretty successfully into the flow of scenes throughout, and then towards the end of episode one, there is a real bravura moment when Leo, Clive and his family are all shown retreating into private time with their devices, four of them finding different versions of sexual release, while Clive doomscrolls down into a rabbit hole of extreme violence.

By contrast, for all the struggles he has been through as a gay man of his generation, Leo has a wearied naivety to him. This leads him to miss just how real a threat his neighbour Clive poses. Whatever the messiness and challenges of parts of his life, his overall financial security and social position blinds him to the danger.

In some brilliantly scripted set-pieces, Leo and his friends Melba (Paul Rhys) and Stephanie (Elizabeth Berrington) talk about how the hard-won rights of LGBT+ people and women are being increasingly challenged – but when the crisis comes, Leo is oblivious to the key moment of risk until it is too late. I am sure that is the lesson RTD is screaming at us all to take heed of now, before things slide downhill too far for us to recover from.

Kevin McKenna is Labour MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey

Tip Toe
Written & created by: Russell T Davies
Directed by: Peter Hoar
Broadcaster: Channel 4

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