‘We’re Screwed’: TV’s Most Prophetic Creator Sounds the Alarm

Starz This piece first ran on the Obsessed by Kevin Fallon Substack .

Subscribe here to read more like it! We’re screwed.

It might even be hopeless.

That’s the prophecy elicited from TV’s most prophetic creator, Russell T.

Davies .

Don’t let that discourage you from watching his searing, outraged, utterly brilliant, and compulsorily urgent new series Tip Toe .

Often upsetting as it might be, it’s one of the most fascinating, fiery, and transfixing series I’ve watched this year.

Currently airing on Starz after its debut in the U.K., where the controversial series stunned by scoring hit ratings , it’s the latest in Davies’ ranging accounts of the struggle for acceptance, dignity, political visibility, governmental accountability, and the right not just to happiness, but to a future.

Particularly when it comes to the marginalized or disenfranchised: His series include Queer as Folk , Years and Years , It’s a Sin , and even Doctor Who .

As Davies told me over Zoom, Tip Toe is his unfiltered screed that every person should watch.

And he thinks it’s a miracle anyone in the U.S. can watch it at all.

“When we were making the show, we imagined that no American company would ever buy it,” he said.

“We thought this wouldn’t ever get any American funding because of what it says about Trump and because of what it says about the state of the world.” Tip Toe is set in Manchester, centered on neighbors Leo ( The Traitors host Alan Cumming ), a 60-year-old firebrand gay man who owns a bar in the city’s gay district, and Clive ( David Morrissey ), a conservative blue-collar worker growing resentful of a society where it’s increasingly hard to make ends meet.

The seemingly mundane act of Leo giving Clive a spare key to his house portends an escalating feud.