‘I used to walk into a room and just go, ta-daa! Now I tip toe. Just in case.’

That’s the powerful line from the first episode of Russell T Davies’ latest Channel 4 series Tip Toe, which began last weekend. Starring Alan Cumming and David Morrissey, the tense five-part drama was filmed in Manchester and has been described as an urgent and timely tale on culture wars.

If you haven’t watched the first two episodes yet, then I highly recommend you do (they’re available to stream now - with the rest airing this weekend), as it’s a mixture of emotions. There’s queer joy, queer hate, political correctness, erotic romps, and everything in-between.

"Tip Toe is very important to me,” creator Davies said on the red carpet of the Manchester premiere last week. “I wrote it in my heart. It's a tough little story that I hope people engage with."

Without giving too much of the story away, it follows two neighbours of 15 years as the bubbling-under feelings of what people can or can’t say to one another rises above the surface. As their worlds intertwine even further, identity, sexuality and masculinity all come into contention.

And, whether we like it or not, it tackles a subject which is very real right now. Former Hollyoaks actor Gabriel Clark said he even came across homophobia on Manchester’s Canal Street whilst filming the show.

“"Going on Canal Street now I feel a mix of feeling safe but also being slightly at risk,” he explains. “The week before we started filming, I went out to watch a drag show with someone from the show, we were just walking down the street and these guys pulled up in a car, jumped out, screamed f*****s at us, got back in and drove off. This was the week before we started filming."

Top Boy and Wednesday star Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, who plays bar worker Judy, says they too have experienced a shift in how members of the LGBTQ+ community can be themselves without fear today - but it strengthens the importance of the queer venues which offer a sense of community and belonging.

“In London and Manchester, this is the first time in many years I’ve had to go, hang on a minute, I need to straighten myself up a bit,” they explain. “I’m polyamorous, I have two partners, one trans girlfriend and one queer, bisexual boy. When I’m with him I feel safe, because I pass, I can be in straight spaces.

"When I’m out with her or she’s out on her own, I am stressed. Text me when you get to where you’re going, when you get home, It’s not her and I don’t want to keep tabs on another human being but outside it is peak for people who are visibly queer and want to live their truth out loud.

“So a place like [Tip Toe’s fictional venue] Spit & Polish is a reminder that those refuges exist. To get that message out on a media scale, so that people can hear it and express their gender identity or their sexuality, they know there’s somewhere to go, where you can step in and leave all that **** outside, listen to Diana Ross for a few hours and dance baby dance, while it all burns. It’s a refuge for a moving target.”

Creator Davies is perhaps best known for his work on Queer As Folk - a defining piece of British LGBTQ+ TV history which helped introduce so many to the havenous clubs and bars we can feel safe and belong.

On the evolution of how things have changed since the 1999 show first aired, he said: "In Queer as Folk, Nathan Maloney was an outlier. He was like a blazing comet. He was so rare. It’s so much more complicated now.

"Of course closeted people still exist but you need to show that the world has changed since back then. But coming out is still coming out. People still have fears. You would have thought back when I came out that it would be so much better now. But it isn’t. Some things are and yet the pull backwards is astonishing."

Tip Toe is on Channel 4.