Have you finished watching Tip Toe, the landmark new show by TV genius Russell T Davies? Ok, good. We'll give you a second to collect yourself, because that is not an easy watch. It is an important one though, the kind of show that makes history, and as such, you're probably wondering what else you can watch in a similar vein.
Davies has a long list of incredible shows you can dive into, including the likes of It's a Sin and Queer as Folk, each of which share DNA with Tip Toe. You probably know that already though, so instead, we're going to dive into some other recommendations which might not be on your radar, but are just as worth watching.
Years and Years
First up is Years and Years, a scathing critique of the present that takes us from 2019 right up to 2034. As British society grows increasingly dystopian in the show, we can't help but draw comparisons between the Lyons family on screen and what this country is going through in real life.
Davies makes each incremental slip into hell all the more plausible by tapping into current fears, much like how he does with Tip Toe. The difference here is that we see exactly where all these problems are taking us, and it's nowhere good.
Shout out to the phenomenal cast who ground Years and Years, including Rory Kinnear as the Lyons family patriarch, T'Nia Miller in the role of his struggling wife Celeste, and Russell Tovey as a gay housing officer who faces tragedy. The less said about Emma Thompson's part as malicious politician Vivienne Rook the better.
Years and Years is available to stream now on Studio Canal. Episodes can also be purchased via Prime Video and Sky Store.
What to Read Next
Pose
While Tip Toe mourns the rights queer people are starting to lose in the here and now, Pose looks back at the '80s and '90s – set in New York City's ballroom scene – during a pivotal time when the LGBTQ+ community took huge strides forward.
Ryan Murphy's most acclaimed TV show celebrated the African-American and Latino communities, and the series boasted a phenomenal cast. In 2019, Pose star Billy Porter became the first openly gay Black man to be nominated for an Emmy in a lead acting category. Two years later, his co-star Michaela Jaé Rodriguez also made history by becoming the first trans lead to ever be nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress by the Emmys in a drama series.
Crucial to the show's success was the queer joy Pose always pushed front and centre, even in the face of hardship (for its trans characters especially). Although if there's one reason why Pose truly works as well as it does, that might just be down to Dominique Jackson in the role of Elektra Abundance-Evangelista, a mother of the former House of Abundance who mothers in every way possible.
Pose is available to stream on Disney+.
Angels in America
Tip Toe might be rooted in the here and now, but it stands on the shoulders of giants, especially when it comes to Leo's HIV diagnosis and the struggles he faced before reaching a point where PREP is commonplace today. As such, it's imperative that you watch Angels in America, which many people have long heralded as the definitive piece of art about the AIDS crisis.
Starting out as a Pulitzer Prize winning play in 1991, the story was adapted by Mike Nichols for TV in 2003 where it became an Emmy-winning miniseries. In fact, this version of Angels in America became one of only three programs in Emmy history to sweep every major eligible category and win all four acting categories.
The sweeping scope of this story is epic in a way usually reserved for cinema. Career-best performances abound in this tale of a gay man living with AIDS, who's visited by an angel at the height of the crisis. Just keep a bottle of water handy because you're going to cry until your body reaches dangerous levels of dehydration. Trust us on that.
Angels in America is available to stream on HBO MAX.
Looking
Before he was hunting minds or getting frozen, Jonathan Groff starred in the HBO series Looking which followed the lives of three gay men living in San Francisco. Like Tip Toe, this groundbreaking show authentically depicted the reality of moving through the modern world as a gay man (although Looking was a tad less traumatic in its approach).
In fact, Patrick, Agustín, and Dom were just as likely to experience joy as they did heartbreak in their pursuit of love and just figuring out who they are. Not since Queer as Folk did a series foreground the experiences of gay men in their thirties and forties with such candid nuance. And yep, that does include the show's now-iconic douching scene.
Tip Toe talks of all the progress gay men and the queer community at large have made in the previous decades, and a big part of that is down to shows like this one.
Looking is available to stream on HBO MAX.
Fellow Travelers
History is told by those in power, which means queer people and other marginalised groups are often sidelined in the history books. Yet the LGBTQ+ community has always existed in one form or another. We've always been here, and we certainly aren't going anywhere. Tip Toe often vocalises this, charting the progress that people like Leo and Melba fought for in decades prior.
Fellow Travelers goes one step further and actually shows this through the lens of a romance between two men named Hawkins Fuller and Timothy Laughlin. Upon meeting during the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s, Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey's characters remain connected in a volatile romance that spans the '60s, '70s and '80s, encountering social protests, disco hedonism and the AIDS crisis along the way.
Both Bomer and Bailey were rightly nominated by the Emmys for their touching performances, which ground this love story across decades of lust and hardship.
Fellow Travelers is available to stream on Paramount Plus.
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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.
