Tip Toe: Russell T. Davies’ ‘deeply stirring’ state-of-the-nation TV

Russell T. Davies’ portrait of gay life in and around Manchester’s Canal Street in his 1990s drama “Queer as Folk” was, to use one of his favourite phrases, “a hoot”, said Ben Dowell in The Times: a joyful celebration of newfound freedoms. “How differently he sees it now.”

“Tip Toe”, Davies’ new Channel 4 series, begins with the lifeless body of Leo, the owner of a Canal Street bar played by Alan Cumming, swinging from a lamppost outside his house; his neighbour Clive (David Morrissey) stands beneath him. Then the story flashes back to 10 days earlier, to see how we got there. This is crusading, state-of-the-nation TV, and it can be unsubtle. “But when Davies steps down from his pulpit and lets his characters breathe, his story-telling is visionary” and “devastating”.

Yes, “Tip Toe” really is quite unsubtle, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. In the first episode, every possible culture-war issue is name-checked: transgender rights, pronouns, refugees, Brexit. We learn that Clive, a bigoted electrician, is “a workplace bully and a Leave voter”. It doesn’t matter where you stand on these issues; the show often feels “like agitprop, not art”. Fortunately, Davies is “too good and instinctive a storyteller” to bang the drum indefinitely, and in time he settles into his groove.

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“‘Tip Toe’ certainly doesn’t tiptoe in,” said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph. “It wades in swinging, echoing its writer’s alarm at what he sees happening to the country.” This drama takes “wrong turns” but it is never less than “deeply stirring. TV polemic is back, loud and proud.”