The ‘Tip Toe’ Trailer Twists Around Our Terrible Era
'Tip Toe' is a must-watch for our backlash era, if nothing else than to bear witness to what our society is doing to itself.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, that social progress is a slow, incremental process, riddled with setbacks large and small. For every action, there’s an equal reaction; every time the pendulum swings too far in one direction, there is a direct correlation with it swinging back the other way.
It’s quite another to live through it.
For the U.K.’s queer community, the past few years have been nothing short of a nightmare. For Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who), one of the U.K.’s most outspoken LGBTQ+ writers, it inspired him to write Tip Toe.
The 2020s have been some of the hardest years for minority groups across both America and the United Kingdom, but none more so than the LGBTQ+ community. After living through an AIDS epidemic that was never properly acknowledged by our society, they spent 20 years making gains, culminating in marriage equality and civil rights becoming law across much of Western culture in the mid-twenty-teens. However, since the turn of the decade, the backlash – which has been swift and fierce – is nothing short of genuinely terrifying. This is especially true in the U.K., which has earned the nickname TERF Island for its open bigotry against transgender people. Moreover, the Reform movement (which it turns out is apparently mainly funded by American billionaires) has all but preached open violence and ethno-nationalism.
This is the setting for Tip Toe, a story about Leo, a gay man, and his neighbor Clive, who is slowly becoming radicalized by right-wing rhetoric. Things get worse when Clive realizes one of his two sons, Saul, is LGBTQ+; his response is to blame Leo for somehow “turning” the kid gay.
With the series heading to American streaming in October, Starz has released the full-length trailer for Tip Toe, riveting in the same way one can’t look away from a car crash. Horrifying, terrible, heart-wrenching, and a must-watch.
Here’s the Starz synopsis:
Tip Toe is a darkly witty, yet harrowing and explosive thriller that explores the most corrosive forces facing the LGBTQ+ community today. Leo and Clive have lived next door to each other in Manchester for almost 15 years. Leo runs Spit & Polish, a bar on Canal Street, and Clive is an electrician with two teenage sons.
But just as life should be settling down for both, the world around them is growing more tense. Words become weapons, opinions become radicalized, and gradually the two neighbors become deadly enemies in a tense, thrilling drama that spotlights the prejudices that have started to creep back into our lives, in a story that speaks not just to the queer community, but to the world at large.
Alan Cumming (The Traitors) stars as Leo Struthers, with David Morrissey (Gone) as Clive Gross. They lead an ensemble that includes Pooky Quesnel (Moonflower Murders) as Clive’s wife, Marie Gross, and Jackson Connor (Masters of the Air) and Joseph Evans (All Creatures Great & Small) as their sons, George and Saul.
On Leo’s found family side, there’s Elizabeth Berrington (Lost Boys & Fairies) as Stephanie, Iz Hesketh (Renegade Nell) as Zee, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo (Wednesday) as Judy, Paul Rhys (Saltburn) as Melba, and small-screen relative newcomers Gabriel Clark and Shakeel Kimotho as Mikey and Hanna.
(James Stack/Channel 4/Starz)
Supporting cast includes Charlie Condou (Unforgotten) as Curtis, Dominic Holmes (Industry) as Regime, and Denise Welch (Benidorm Is Murder) as Diane.
Davies wrote all five episodes of the series, with Peter Hoar (The Last of Us) directing and Phil Collinson producing. Davies, Hoar, and Cumming are all executive producers, alongside Nicola Shindler of Quay Street Productions.
Tip Toe premieres Friday, October 2, 2026, on Starz, with new episodes streaming weekly through the end of the month.
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