We can’t get enough of new things to watch, and when they are filmed in familiar places, there’s even more reason to watch. Now, Channel 4 has commissioned a powerfully resonant new original drama, Tip Toe, from the multi-award-winning Russell T Davies (It’s A Sin, Queer as Folk, Doctor Who), produced by Quay Street Productions – meaning much of the production is currently happening in Manchester.
Russell T Davies’ most recent Channel 4 drama was the extraordinary and critically-acclaimed It’s A Sin, which powerfully examined the devastating human story behind the 1980s AIDS crisis and went on to become Channel 4’s biggest ever instant boxset on streaming.
Now, Davies will explore the most corrosive forces facing the LGBTQ+ community today in Tip Toe, examining the danger as prejudice creeps back into our lives, with Manchester as a backdrop. Problems we thought were long-gone are returning, toughened and weaponised, until no one knows truth from lies anymore.
Instagram post via @channel4
Twenty-five years later, the team behind the ground-breaking Queer as Folk is returning to Manchester and Canal Street, with this vital story that speaks not just to the queer community but to the world today.
Tip Toe, a five-part series, will follow Leo and Clive, who live next door to each other in Manchester. As filming begins, Alan Cumming and David Morrissey have been announced as cast leads for the series. Emmy and Tony award-winner and Golden Globe and SAG Award nominee Alan Cumming (The Traitors, Glenrothan) is Leo, vivid, funny, and dynamic, he’s the owner of a bar called Spit & Polish in Manchester’s Gay Village.
BAFTA-nominated and RTS-winner David Morrissey (Sherwood, Daddy Issues) is electrician Clive, Leo’s unsmiling and troubled next-door neighbour with two teenage sons. But just as life should be settling down, the world around them is growing more tense. Words become weapons, opinions become radicalised, and gradually, two neighbours become deadly enemies in a tense, suburban thriller which challenges everything we consider to be safe.
The series, populated with a cast of vibrant characters and underscored with Davies’ trademark wit and deft humour, is an urgent yet gripping tale that brings a spotlight to bear on the re-emergence of an incipient threat.
Russell T Davies, Writer and Creator, said: “It’s my honour to combine my old home, Channel 4, with my second home, Canal Street. This is a show I had to write because the world is getting stranger, tougher and darker, and frankly, the fight is on.”
Alan Cumming said: “The best things in life are worth waiting for, and the best people. Russell T Davies and I have been trying to work together for over 20 years. Now, not only are we working together but doing so with one of my dearest, oldest friends, Dave Morrissey, and in a piece of work I think is so brilliant and prescient and necessary. I don’t say this lightly, but this is truly an honour.”
David Morrissey said: “I’m delighted to be working with Russell again, and also to be working with Alan who has been a great friend of mine for over 40 years but we’ve never had the chance to work together. It’s a privilege to be with them both on this astonishing piece of work.”
Also joining the cast are Pooky Quesnel (The A Word, Moonflower Murders) as Clive’s wife Marie, Jackson Connor (Phoenix Rise, Masters of the Air) and Joseph Evans (The Map That Leads To You, CC Emily) as Clive’s sons George and Saul, Elizabeth Berrington (Lost Boys & Fairies, Last Night In Soho) as Leo’s best friend Stephanie, Iz Hesketh, Shakeel Kimotho, Luyanda Unati Lewis Nyawo, Paul Rhys, Charlie Condou, and the iconic Denise Welch.
