Alan Cumming's new thriller asks what happens when hate moves next door

The showrunner who brought us Queer as Folk, It’s A Sin, and of course, Doctor Who, is back with a new, dark drama: Tip Toe, premiering Sunday on the U.K.'s Channel 4. It stars Alan Cumming as bar owner Leo and David Morrissey as Clive, an electrician who lives next door in Manchester, England.

Russell T. Davies says the series explores what he sees as a growing backlash against LGBTQ+ rights and the normalization of online-fueled extremism. Speaking to the BBC, Davies said Tip Toe pulls back the curtain on a “sliding back of gay rights” and highlights how the terrors of the online world have become mainstream. And while it's clearly shot through what Davies called “a queer lens,” he believes its themes will resonate with many marginalized communities.

"A Jew could have written this,” Davies said. “If this was a Jewish version of the story you wouldn’t be calling it timely, you’d be calling it too late.” His comments followed last month's stabbing attacks on Jewish men in North London that police categorized as terror attacks, as well as the firebombings of synagogues.

Davies believes the disabled community will also see itself represented in Tip Toe. “I have had a friend in a wheelchair have someone knock on her door and tell her she’s lying, that she’s a benefit fraud, and that she can actually walk. That actually is physically happening in the world,” said Davies.

"Just as life should be settling down, the world around them is growing more tense," reads the official synopsis. "Words become weapons, opinions become radicalised, and gradually, two neighbors become deadly enemies in a tense, suburban thriller which challenges everything we consider to be safe."

"It's a story about two neighbors that goes haywire, but it's about the way that violence and hatred are sort of normalised so much in our culture nowadays," Cumming told ITV's This Morning program. "It's hopefully a wake-up call for everybody."

Alan Cumming plays Leo in "Tip Toe" Photo by Ben Blackall/Channel 4 www.advocate.com

Cumming recently spoke with Out about where we are as a society, a theme the drama explores through the neighbors' conflicts.

"So much is happening in our world and our politics," the bisexual star and former Out cover star said. "No matter how we feel about it, we are powerless. There's so much in our culture right now that we cannot control, and we're just helpless. I think we have to rely on each other, and it's really important for people like me to speak out. I don't have the power to change it, but I certainly have the platform to let other people know how I feel."

Cumming’s costar and friend of 40 years, Morrissey, explained that the five-part series does not unfold in a linear fashion.

"Russell plays with the timeframe brilliantly, so you feel that you know where you are in the story, you feel you know these characters and what's going to happen," Morrissey said in the TV interview with ITV. "And then he'll suddenly take you back a few days, take you back a year or whatever, and you see a different part of it. It's about those assumptions."

"This is a show I had to write because the world is getting stranger, tougher and darker, and frankly, the fight is on," Davies told the BBC. “Being online is a brand new form of communication that we did not evolve to suit,” he said. “We’re taking it so lightly and so much enjoying its benefits at the same time as we are actually sliding into hell.”

David Morrissey plays Clive in "Tip Toe" Photo by Ben Blackall / Channel 4 www.advocate.com

This is a return to Channel 4 for Davies following his 2021 hit series, It’s a Sin, about the AIDS epidemic, which The Advocate called a history lesson that doesn't feel like one.

With Tip Toe, the BBC competitor allowed him to “sit back and be more radical,” Davies said, as opposed to the British Broadcasting Corporation, which he said “insists” that he writes happy endings, citing the dystopian thriller Years & Years.

"It is a huge privilege to back this remarkable new series from Russell, one of the greatest writers of our time, and the man behind some of our most era-defining hits, including Queer as Folk and It's A Sin," said Ollie Madden, director of Film4 and Channel 4 Drama. "We couldn't love Tip Toe more: it is funny, gripping, full of heart, and an urgent call to arms."

Watch a clip from Tip Toe below.

- YouTube youtu.be