Alan Cumming's new thriller asks what happens when hate moves next door

The showrunner who brought us Queer as Folk, It’s A Sin, and of course, Doctor Who, is back with a new, dark drama: Tip Toe, premiering Sunday on the U.K.'s Channel 4. It stars Alan Cumming as bar owner Leo and David Morrissey as Clive, an electrician who lives next door in Manchester, England. Russell T. Davies says the series explores what he sees as a growing backlash against LGBTQ+ rights and the normalization of online-fueled extremism. Speaking to the BBC, Davies said Tip Toe pulls back the curtain on a “sliding back of gay rights” and highlights how the terrors of the online world have become mainstream. And while it's clearly shot through what Davies called “a queer lens,” he believes its themes will resonate with many marginalized communities. "A Jew could have written this,” Davies said. “If this was a Jewish version of the story you wouldn’t be calling it timely, you’d be calling it too late.” His comments followed last month's stabbing attacks on Jewish men in North London that police categorized as terror attacks, as well as the firebombings of synagogues.Davies believes the disabled community will also see itself represented in Tip Toe. “I have had a friend in a wheelchair have someone knock on her door and tell her she’s lying, that she’s a benefit fraud, and that she can actually walk. That actually is physically happening in the world,” said Davies."Just as life should be settling down, the world around them is growing more tense," reads the official synopsis. "Words become weapons, opinions become radicalised, and gradually, two neighbors become deadly enemies in a tense, suburban thriller which challenges everything we consider to be safe.""It's a story about two neighbors that goes haywire, but it's about the way that violence and hatred are sort of normalised so much in our culture nowadays," Cumming told ITV's This Morning program. "It's hopefully a wake-up call for everybody." Alan Cumming plays Leo in "Tip Toe" Pho