Series / Tip Toe (2026)

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Tip Toe is a 2026 British Mini Series written by Russell T Davies with frequent collaborators Peter Hoar directing and Phil Collinson producing. It stars Alan Cumming, David Morrissey, Jackson Connor, Joseph Evans and Elizabeth Berrington. The series was made and broadcast on Channel 4 as part of Pride Month from 31 May 2026 with its five episode becoming available to stream before the finale aired.

It follows Leo Struthers (Cumming), a gay man in Manchester who gives a spare key to his next-door neighbor, Clive (Morrissey). This one decision leads to an escalating feud between them over the course of a week.

Tip Toe contains examples of:

• All Gays Are Pedophiles: While averted by the show itself, the argument is made over and over in the escalating feud between Leo and Clive, to the point that Leo is smeared as a pedophile even after his own murder.
• Arc Words: Variations of “we have you lot to thank for that”, used by several characters to justify their hate towards opposite groups:
  • For Clive, “you lot” of course refers to his warped perception of the LGBT community and its supposedly corrupting influence on western culture.
  • For Leo, “you lot” refers to the heteronormative status quo. He has concluded that much of the stigma against gays all stems back to how the straight majority have treated them throughout history.
  • Despite being friendly with Leo and other Canal Street regulars, Stephanie uses it a few times to criticise the excesses of the LGBT community. She blames them for making a mockery of self-identification, and gay men specifically for denigrating women.
  • A conversation between Clive and another builder flips it into a more topical political debate, with the builder criticising “you lot”, as in Brexiteers, who willingly chose to isolate Britain from the rest of Europe and make life miserable for everyone else.
• Awful Wedded Life: Clive and Marie. Their sex life is in shambles, and Clive lives in a self-imposed hell because he lied about cheating on Marie with another woman at a caravan park (thinking this would make him more desirable to her), for which she has never forgiven him. Marie, meanwhile, lacks the courage to leave him because she knows she wouldn’t survive financially on her own, so they come to the bitter conclusion that they’ll be stuck in this prison of their own making until one of them dies. She eventually escapes after Clive gets life imprisonment for murdering Leo.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Saul is implied to be very well-endowed based on commenters on his livestreams praising his “monster”, which (combined with his Pretty Boy status) apparently contributes to his success as an OnlyFans model.
• Boomerang Bigot:
  • There are many hints that Clive’s vicious homophobia is partly driven by being Armored Closet Gay himself. This is all but confirmed when he touches himself to a music video of a drag queen he stood up for in Leo’s club, and Leo himself eventually accuses him of having more stereotypically gay proclivities than him, which is what finally drives Clive to being willing to murder Leo.
  • One of the mob who takes part in the murder was also seen at Leo's gay bar previously.
• Central Theme: Disinformation and ill-informed stereotypes enabling people to use hatred for groups they perceive as other to cover up the insecurity and unhappiness in their own lives.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Good lord, Clive. He browses conspiracy theories online and parrots them without a hint of critical thought. In particular, he’s both a COVID and AIDS denier, insisting that the government spent millions on research for diseases that never existed. Yet, he’s still threatened by the prospect of Leo and other queer characters being infectious.
• Dead Hat Shot: Leo's hanging concludes with one of his slippers falling onto the ground.
• Didn't Think This Through: Zee's decision to take the 16-year-old George on a boozy night out to help with his eventual coming out, while questionable at best, was at least done with the best of intentions. The eventual, ruinous end result would have been impossible to predict, but her complete lack of consideration that photos of the night would potentially get back to George's family via social media is still incredibly short-sighted.
• Downer Ending: Almost all of the characters have very bleak endings to their stories.
  • Leo is murdered and besmirched as having been a convicted pedophile online whenever someone looks up his case.
  • Clive and Roddy receive life sentences in prison for leading the mob while the others each get roughly 10 years and can be released after 4 or 5.
  • George drops out of university and spends most of his life in and out of trouble with the law for petty crimes and drug-related offences following the trauma of it all.
  • Downplayed only slightly with the others. Marie moves to Scotland with both George and Saul and changes her name. Saul, believing that his life is now over following the murder, but he meets and falls in love with a nice woman and settles down having started his own security company. Arguably the best of everyone involved in the murder.
  • Stephanie takes early retirement and travels the world, preferring not to stay in one place for too long, likely for she doesn't have to remember that day.
  • Zee legally changes her name to Sarah and becomes a school teacher, though if the incident at the bar involving the drag performer's students from his teaching job are any indication she will likely not be free from harassment.
  • Melba just gets drunk on the anniversary of Leo's murder every year.
  • Curtis inherits the bar and it becomes a pizzeria, likely taking away a safe space from many of Leo's customers.
• Extremely Short Time Span: Though Leo and Clive have lived a door away from each other for years, events are set over a single week.
• Football Hooligans: Introduced in the fifth and final episode, a number of these lads turn up at Clive's to watch a match on television. Eventually, mounting homophobic tensions and a heavy intake of alcohol leads to the group lynching Leo with Clive's help.
• From Bad to Worse: In the finale, every questionable revelation about Leo, George, Saul and Zee spills for all to see. The situation spirals out of control until the hooligans are riled into a frenzy by Clive.
• How We Got Here: The story opens with a flash forward to Leo being strung up from a lamppost. It then flashes back to show how the characters reached this point.
• Insufferable Genius: While not blaming him for the whole drama, Stephanie accuses Leo of having an obvious intellectual superiority complex over the “fucking Flintstones” next door, which Leo can’t even deny. This did not help with calming the tensions between the two households.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: The first episode ends with a gonzo montage of nearly all the main characters masturbating, which climaxes (literally) with Leo and George impulsively matching with each other on Grindr, just before post-nut clarity kicks in. For each of them, it embodies a different kind of frustration:
  • Leo, who has been a promiscuous bachelor for some time after his partner left him for a woman, watches a cheesy gay porno starring muscular builders.
  • George, who is deeply closeted, unable to confide in anyone, and distressed about a guy ditching him after they slept together, favours Bara Genre hentai.
  • Saul secretly records OnlyFans content of himself masturbating, though later episodes show his anxiety and paranoia about being caught by his family.
  • Marie listens to an erotic audiobook after exiling Clive to the sofa downstairs. This is the first indication of the pair’s Awful Wedded Life.
  • Clive is the only one who does not masturbate, but more sinisterly, he watches graphic death videos on Twitter with a completely blank, desensitised expression. This either indicates his depression or something far more disturbing about his sexuality.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Saul spends most of his first scene practically naked barring a towel, and is noted by Leo to be particularly strapping. He earns far more than his dad by working as an OnlyFans model; he’s seen stripping down, having sex and ejaculating on camera.
  • Leo himself is no slouch in this department despite pushing 60, as the entire plot is kickstarted by him running out into the street in nothing but a vest and boxers, with his large bulge on display, and pleading for Clive’s help.
• Nice Guy: With a dash of Beauty Equals Goodness; Saul is the only member of the Goss family to be routinely polite and considerate towards Leo, never denigrating him for his sexuality. He alone tries and fails to prevent Leo’s eventual lynching, but is held in a headlock by the football lads he once considered his mates.
• Noble Bigot: Deconstructed with Stephanie. She is shown to be a genuinely good friend to Leo and Zee, and is understandably utterly horrified by the action Clive takes at the end. However, she regularly spouts gender-critical talking points, is openly and casually transphobic, and at times displays homophobic misinformation and stereotypes that aren't that far removed from the hatred that drives Clive.
• Real Time: While not strictly adhering to a real time format, like 24 the series was broadcast on Channel 4 over the course of 10 days, the length of time covered in the plot.
• Redemption Rejection: By the fourth episode it seems Clive may be turning a corner, visiting Leo's bar to better understand the LGBT community so he can relate to his son, standing up for a drag queen who is attacked, and seemingly coming to some kind of understanding with Leo. It doesn't last into the final episode, as the goading of the football lads and his own insecurities about his sexuality and masculinity drive him into a murderous rage.
• Tall Tale: Leo is a shameless raconteur who never lets the truth get in the way of a funny story. He claims several times that when his laptop was stolen, he ran out into the street butt naked, when he was clearly in underwear, and the event was more awkward than hilarious.
• Token Minority: While Clive is implied to have racist views (more than once mentioning some variation of 'foreigners are taking our jobs' and tossing an Asian worker's tools into the river out of pure spite), one of the football hooligans who eventually carry out the lynching is a black man.
• Torches and Pitchforks: Leo and Clive become increasingly more polarized through their feud, which ends with Leo being essentially lynched by an angry mob.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Melba encourages Zee to rush off to help George without a plan, which only add another match to the ensuing bonfire.