How TV drama Tip Toe makes online hate a real-world issue

“I used to walk into a room and just go, ta-da! Now, I tip toe, just in case”.

When the first episode of new Russell T. Davies’ drama series, Tip Toe, aired on Channel 4, it was clear that he had something to say: hatred is back, and more powerful than ever. His message struck a chord, with the monologue from which the above quote was taken racking up 2.9 million views on Instagram

Tip Toe follows the lives of neighbours Leo and Clive as their relationship slowly deteriorates. Culminating in a Leo's brutal murder by Clive and a group of his friends, the show aims to explore latent homophobia in the UK, made worse by the availability of extreme content on social media.

Describing the show, Tip Toe’s producer, Phil Collinson, said: “I think it's very much a state of the nation piece as well, more than anything I've ever made. I think it's the story of now, what's happening; there's a lot of anger in it; there's an alarm bell that's been sounded by it.”

Mr Collinson grew up gay in the North-West of England in the 1980s, an era marred by the HIV/AIDS crisis – something which he and Davies explored in Bafta-winning It’s A Sin – and the rise of Margaret Thatcher’s traditional values.

He sees the same rhetoric that ushered in Section 28 not just creeping back into public discourse but leading the conversation, mirrored by think tank ILGA-Europe’s 2026 Rainbow map, which showed the UK had plummeted to the 22nd most welcoming country in Europe for LGBTQ+ people behind nations such as Estonia and Croatia.

“You go into Canal Street – as we did filming – and talk to the people who work there and they'll say, ‘yeah, there are gangs driving past and shouting abuse at people again’, things they haven't seen for years are happening”, Mr Collinson says.

He continues: “I've lived through a Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland standing up and talking about restricting children's reading and education on LGBT matters because they don't have an inalienable right to be gay.

“How many countries are there in the world where it's illegal to be heterosexual? None. Where are they murdering people for their heterosexuality? Nowhere. It's like we are loathed and feared, and people have the fear that their child would end up like me.”

The shadows of the past that haunt Mr Collinson and many LGBT+ people who grew up around him are nothing new. What is, however, is a social media landscape that acts as a vehicle for the widespread and instant sharing of hate.

In 2023, 16-year-old transgender girl Brianna Ghey was lured to a park in Warrington and murdered by two fellow teenagers. Those teenagers – including Brianna – were heavily inspired by what they had seen online: extreme violence and transphobia.

Brianna Ghey Legacy Project’s Hannah Oertel, said: “Brianna had been really addicted to social media and her phone and had major mental health issues before she was murdered, and I think that maybe some people weren't really aware of that.”

She adds: “The murder was the main focus, but also the kids that did kill her had been consuming a lot of torture content on the dark web.”

The Legacy Project was founded by Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, as a way of revealing the dangers of social media and the online world for both children and parents alike. Much of the content they aim to protect children from features heavily in Tip Toe, with one scene depicting Clive watching a murder video, while the rest of his family consume pornography, create adult content, and scroll through a dating app.

One of the Project’s campaigns, Look Up and Live, is angled at solving these problems in a “very non-judgmental way”, Ms Oertel says.

“We know that this is extremely difficult for parents today who have given their kids a phone”, she continues, “we know the pressure that's on them; I think often parents will think, oh, well, my kid wouldn't do something like that, or this wouldn't happen, but it really does.”

With specific regard to the use of social media to spread hatred against minorities, Ms Oertel notes that the internet is an even more violent place for LGBTQ+ people: “I mean, even with Brianna, anything Esther does in the media, there will always be transphobic comments underneath saying ‘he, he, he’.”