One of TV’s greatest gay creators reflects on where it all went wrong

By David Mack, CNN

(CNN) — Over almost four decades, Russell T Davies has established himself as one of the most influential TV showrunners in the UK — and in the global queer community. In shows like “Queer as Folk,” “Years and Years,” “It’s a Sin” and “A Very English Scandal,” Davies has explored the LGBTQ community’s evolving place in society.

He never imagined he’d be creating a show set in 2026 where things seemed to be devolving for his queer characters.

“I’m kind of sad that having done ‘Queer as Folk’ in 1999, that then you would have imagined 2026 would be a lot happier with equal gay rights everywhere, instead of seeing it going wrong,” Davies said. “There is such hatred. There is such fear. There is such venom being whipped up by very powerful voices and very knowing voices.”

In his new series “Tip Toe,” Davies finds creative inspiration in hateful rhetoric about queer people trying to recruit children — a trope long used to undermine LGBTQ rights that has recently seen a resurgence.

“The impossibility of this is advancing on us rapidly, tumultuously,” Davies said. “My God, I had to write about it.”

“Tip Toe” began streaming in the US on the Starz network on Friday, having first premiered in the UK in May.

It kicks off in Manchester, where a character named Leo (played by Alan Cumming, the Emmy-winning host of “The Traitors”) runs a queer bar, while also contending with the increasingly aggressive behavior of his straight neighbor Clive (David Morrissey). Stuck in a marriage from which he can’t afford to divorce, and in a society that’s changed rapidly from what he’s comfortable with, Clive’s rage is slowly stoked by what he consumes on social media, until he becomes convinced Leo is making moves on his teenage son George (Jackson Connor).

Over five episodes, “Tip Toe” explores how generational and gender divides, misinformation, online radicalization and political rhetoric can prove deadly for the queer community. It’s an environment that Davies, and his characters, were hoping to have progressed from. “Do you ever think it’s coming back? All that stuff from the ‘90s? We were despised, but you read the stuff online now and it sounds just the same,” bar regular Melba (Paul Rhys) tells Leo in the premiere. “I used to walk into a room and go, ‘Tah-dah!’ Now, I tiptoe — just in case.”

The increasing frequency of derogatory language and tropes about queer people that were once considered horrifically outdated have had impacts for the LGBTQ community that extend well beyond the cancellation of drag queen story hours. Support for same-sex marriage among Americans, for example, has started to decline slightly since 2022, according to pollster Gallup, after climbing for decades. Donald Trump’s administration has also seized on the moment to actively target transgender people in matters of identification, medical care and sports, with the ACLU accusing the White House of trying to “push transgender people out of public life.”

For Davies, some of this vitriol has occasionally been felt first-hand. After he cast transgender actor Yasmin Finney in his revival of “Doctor Who” in 2023, Russell said online bigots began targeting him with abuse by calling him a pedophile and groomer. “It reaches the point where you think, ‘How much am I in danger from this?’” he said. “For 10 years, I’ve sat there not caring about it, but now I think we are seeing a world in which online anger is stepping out into the real world.”

Davies pointed to the recent killing of two men outside a gay bar in Tucson, Arizona, by a gunman said to be carrying a list of LGBTQ businesses as more evidence that the environment for queer people has become more threatening. “It’s the shape of the world now. It’s terrifying,” he said.

In “Tip Toe,” Melba seems to give voice to Davies’ view about where much of this invective can be traced: President Trump. Davies said he believed leaders like Trump and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had modeled bullying behavior for their supporters. “When your leaders are doing that, then you think it’s natural and it’s allowed,” he said.

But parts of “Tip Toe” also flirt with the idea that the successes of queer representation in popular culture — thanks, in no small part, to groundbreaking works like those of Davies — has been a double-edged sword. In one episode, Clive rages that he can’t seem to turn on the television without seeing characters he believes are normalizing identities that seem foreign to him and which only make him madder. “We fought to be seen, but what if we got it wrong?” Leo wonders at one point. “What if they see us, and they still don’t like us?”

Davies said he believes part of his job as a TV creator is to make a matter of historical record for what it’s like to be a queer person at different points in history. It just so happens that, right now, he has a fairly dark view of the world.

He recalled a transgender couple at one event telling him how terrified they were. “And that’s Britain in 2026,” he said. “What the f*ck is going on?”

The-CNN-Wire
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