The series that shows the tsunami of hate that surrounds us

BarcelonaThe beginning of Tip toe, the HBO Max miniseries premiering this Thursday, is the kind of opening that sends a chill down your spine. The camera transports us to a residential neighborhood in Manchester, with its characteristic, identical brick houses. At the entrance of one of these houses, we see a woman screaming. She says something like, "He's a monster." Directly in front of her is a man, whom we understand to be her husband, with an unperturbed expression. Then, the camera moves and a woman appears on the ground, we don't know if alive or dead. There's still a final blow: the camera pans up and we see a man hanging from a street lamp. Then, the series flashes back ten days to explain how this hellish situation came to be.

The person responsible for the new HBO Max fiction is Russell T. Davies, creator of other miniseries like Years and years andThe Last Kiss. As is customary in all his dramas, political and social commentary are at the epicenter of the story. In this case, his focus is on polarization and radicalization and how these are affecting the LGBTIQ+ community, of which he is a part. As one of the characters points out, hate is no longer something we look at from afar: it's a tsunami that has swept over us.

The two protagonists of Tip toe are neighbors, Leo (Alan Cumming) and Clive (David Morrissey), who have known each other for fifteen years and have had a more or less normal coexistence. The former, a homosexual, runs a bar on Canal Street, the hub of the city's gay life. The latter is a plumber, married with two sons (one adolescent and the other already an adult). The neighborly relationship begins to sour one day when a one-night stand of Leo's steals his laptop and flees. When Leo rushes out after him – dressed only in a tank top and briefs – the house door closes and he's left outside without keys or phone. It is then that he will have to ask Clive for help, who will very soon reveal the many prejudices he holds against him and homosexuality.

A path to terror

Russell T. Davies began to imagine the story of Leo and Clive after giving his house key to his neighbor, as he spends a lot of time away and needed someone to take care of the packages that arrived. Although in his case he has a very good relationship with his neighbor, this fact led him to ask questions about what happens when you give access to your home. Thus, he ended up developing a story about warring neighbors that has nothing comical about it. "[The series] It is an internal reaction to where the world is going. It's not just a matter of politics; it's everything, everyone, and everywhere. Our intolerance, our bad temper, our impatience, our anger. It's all growing, undoubtedly due to the way we communicate: through brief bursts of indelible text. We haven't evolved to communicate like this. We live in a world of visceral and hasty reactions; one way or another, everything ends up generating conflict, and it seems that the LGBTIQ+ community always ends up being singled out as guilty," reflects Davies in an interview for Channel 4, the network that produced the fiction in the United Kingdom.

In English tip toe means to walk on tiptoe and it is an expression that one of the characters, Melba, uses to define how her way of being and expressing herself has changed as a result of the growth of homophobia and hate speech. "We live in a Great Britain where there are people – even some politicians – who speak with satisfaction about burning hotels where immigrants are staying. When a woman is imprisoned for inciting this act, she becomes a popular heroine. Therefore, all steps lead us in this direction. It's not fantasy; you can see the steps we are taking to get there. We are heading towards terror," remarks Davies, who points out that he himself has experienced online hate. "The amount of times I am called a child molester and a pedophile on the internet [for his support of trans rights] is outrageous and perhaps grounds for legal action; although I think that if I took action, it would only make it worse," he explained to the Guardian.