Much has changed in the years since TV writing legend Russell T Davies first wrote Queer as Folk for Channel 4 — but don't assume it's all been good. Promoting his new series Tip Toe, Davies recalled how hopeful he was for the future we now find ourselves in.
"When we were shooting Queer as Folk, if you'd have said to me, 'In 25 years' time, what will gay life and queer life be like?', I would've said, 'We'll have achieved equality, everything will be fine, and we'll all be hand-in-hand, skipping down the street'," Davies reflected (via BBC).
"We kind of got close to that about 10 years ago," Davies continued. "But actually I think things are souring. I feel more hostility in the air, more aggression towards us."
Related: If you're obsessed with Tip Toe, here are 5 shows just as brutal and urgent to watch next
Such "hostility" forms the inspiration behind Tip Toe, a show where the feud between a gay bar owner and his straight neighbour Clive Goss (David Morrissey) takes a horrifically violent turn.
It's no spoiler to reveal that the violence in question ends with Alan Cumming's character, Leo Struthers, hung from a lamppost in his own street. That's because Tip Toe actually begins with his murder, before rewinding back 10 days to reveal what led us to this point.
What to Read Next
After the truth of what happened is revealed towards the end of the final episode, Tip Toe takes a moment to explain what happened next to each character following this tragedy.
Via title cards that show up on screen, we learn that Clive's wife Marie (Pooky Quesnel) moves away to Scotland with their kids, George (Jackson Connor) and Saul (Joseph Evans), where they change their surname.
"George is always in trouble", dropping out of university before he racks up "a lot of convictions for drug related offences".
Saul, meanwhile, "thinks his life is over, but then he meets a lovely woman called Annie. Now he runs a modest little security firm. He and Annie have three children".
Things also go well for Leo's employee Zee Malone (Iz Hesketh), who "chooses the name Sarah and becomes a teacher".
Leo's friend Stephanie Dale (Elizabeth Berrington) struggles more though, after witnessing Leo's death first-hand. Upon taking early retirement, she "then travels the world. She just keeps moving."
Melba (Paul Rhys) fares worse, getting "blind drunk on this day for the rest of his life".
Clive is given a mandatory life sentence for the key role he played in Leo's murder, which somehow doesn't feel like it's enough.
Even more shockingly, Leo's story isn't over either, with his end card explaining how it "keeps changing", ending with the misinformation: "Within 18 months, a search for his name says 'Leo Struthers - Convicted paedophile.'"
What's perhaps most interesting about this is how Tip Toe frames the future of these characters as something real. As such, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this story might be based on real-life events. The use of title cards like this certainly evokes the way true crime documentaries and real-life stories often end.
The truth though is that Tip Toe isn't based on one real-life story. In an exclusive interview with Digital Spy, Davies explained that he "was genuinely interested in what happened to them all", speaking of the characters he created, which is why the title cards show up when they do.
Davies also explained how it was "interesting" that people would ask him whether we discover what happens to the rest of the characters in the end. "So I thought, 'Oh, good. People want to know'," he added. "It's like reading a novel. You want to know what happens at the end. I like that kind of thing."
That's not to say Tip Toe is totally divorced from real life. In fact, Davies has gone on record multiple times to explain how he drew inspiration from what's happening in the real world right now. As such, his latest drama is more of a rallying cry, a furious call to arms, than anything he's written previously.
"We’ve got this slide back into something as bad as I can remember, if not worse, because now people know what they’re doing," Davies told The Guardian.
"In the old days when we used to preach about visibility, if someone punched you in the face, or excluded you … you had the excuse of saying they were ignorant. They were in the dark and we must be visible. And now they’ve seen us, and now I think that anger and that violence is on the rise. So what the f**k does that say?"
As Melba says early on in one of the show's most searing lines of dialogue: "I used to walk into a room and go: 'Ta-da!', now I tip toe, just in case."
Tip Toe also highlights how "online rage", as Davies puts it (to BBC Radio 4), has incentivised the kind of assaults we see take place in the show.
"I have spent a long time debating with myself whether the online world is making people worse in their opinions, or is the online world revealing what we always actually thought, which is a lot more terrifying," he said.
Aren't we lucky then that writers like Davies refuse to tip toe themselves, boldly calling out the real horrors that queer people are facing now at a time when acceptance should be moving forward rather than sliding back.
Tip Toe is available on Channel 4.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
