Happy Pride Month folks!  If you were expecting a glut of queer fluff to hit your TV screens in the UK, you may be sorely disappointed (seriously, BBC, where is S2 of I Kissed a Girl?!). What we did get, though, might end up being far more important, both as a landmark of queer TV and as a drama to capture this specific moment in time.

Russell T Davies is back with his best work in Tip Toe, which charts ten ominous days in the lives of two neighbours in the suburbs of Manchester. Alan Cumming plays flamboyant gay bar owner Leo, whose tense relationship with the family next door—specifically, stern patriarch Clive—is put in the spotlight after a hookup-gone-wrong leaves him locked out.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Alan Cumming’s character is dead at the beginning. The act of seeing how, though, sets you up with a level of dread that will affect how you see everything that follows. This is Russell T Davies though! Gay fun abounds! But knowing how it ends charges every interaction with the fear that something really bad is going to happen.

The first two episodes introduce us to Leo and his eclectic bar staff, including trans woman Zee, non-binary Hannah, and crop-top-clad young gay man Mikey. There is more than a little inter-generational angst between the youthful staff and Leo and his long-time friend, barfly Melba, but overall they are a gang that stick together. This is evidenced brilliantly in a scene where they help Zee grab her stuff to escape a houseshare with five very scary guys.

We do get some clunky dialogue, not so much for exposition but rather characters wearing their politics on their sleeves or acting as temporary mouthpieces for Davies’ societal comments. The show becomes far more effective when it plays with the way people with very different views communicate—or fail to.

The meat of the show is the relationship between Leo and Clive, played to terrifying effect by David Morrissey. Clive is demonstrably frosty at the start of every interaction with Leo, uncomfortable with how open he is about his very gay life. Equally, when Leo’s natural urge for witty banter hits a brick wall, he prickles and lashes out in ways that only escalate the enmity.

Circumstances conspire to make them spend more time in each other’s company than they would like. Firstly, the locked-out incident, followed by Clive “helping” install a lockbox on Leo’s house, then guilt driving Leo to offer Clive electrical work at the bar, putting him face-to-face with yet more queerness he’s just not equipped to handle.

Morrissey’s acting is phenomenal. You just don’t know how he’s going to react to anything. When he’s fixing up the electrics, a comment that starts out sounding racist turns out to be a complaint about foreigners not understanding British voltage before veering into wild conspiracy theories. A moment of light—dancing on the bar’s stage—he shuts down when the staff start cheering him on. It’s all delivered in a slow Scouse monotone with barely a flicker of emotion.

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The exchange that stands out most to me is when Leo and Clive are walking down Canal Street to the bar and Clive mumbles “you watching tonight?” It takes Leo a while to clock that Clive is referring to a football match, and he laughs at the absurdity anyone would ask him that. It’s such an awkward attempt by Clive to spark a conversation, but it is an attempt.

This is the real cruelty of it. That feeling that if circumstances were just a little bit different, maybe these two guys would find a way of existing alongside each other. But Leo staunchly will not repress himself to become an “acceptable” gay, and Clive cannot get over his inhibitions and suspicions to make any accommodations for a person that represents so much he’s afraid of.

One of those fears is around his own sons, one of whom (George) is a very closeted teenager. There’s a genuinely moving scene in the second episode where George texts Leo for help because he’s in love with a boy. We glimpse flashbacks to Leo’s own experiences as he tries to work out what his role is as a 60-year-old man to help this 16-year-old that, despite all the advances over the years, is still very much in need. I cried buckets!

Overall, this is a deeply affecting show. You will laugh, you will cry, you will definitely shout “GET RID OF THAT FUCKING LOCK BOX!!!”

It’s impossible to resist trying to place this among other works in Davies gay canon. The shots of Canal Street immediately take you back to Queer as Folk, but what the show is really doing is bringing the dystopia of Years and Years starkly into the present day with alarming realism. I don’t think I’m alone in walking down my street wondering which of my neighbours will be voting for Reform (or family members for that matter). Through the years we were making progress on gay and trans acceptance, it seemed like we were almost at a point where the worst you had to worry about was shy Tories. Now hatred is an open sport.

Davies has spoken of the urgency of wanting to bring Tip Toe to the screen. I hope it reaches far and wide, because the barriers it depicts between us are the ones we so desperately need to break down.

Tip Toe is streaming in the UK on Channel 4