'Brutal' new Channel 4 drama Tip Toe is the best and most important TV show you'll watch all year — but stream it at your own risk

A group of four people walk down the middle of a street.

When you watch as much TV as I do, it isn't often that your heart rips out of your chest so violently that you can't so much as look at a screen for the rest of the week. Yet Russell T Davies is the showrunner who can achieve this time and time again, from jaw-dropping noughties queer drama Queer as Folk to devastating AIDS crisis tragedy It's a Sin.

Now, Channel 4 adds Tip Toe to Davies' ever-growing list of gut punches, which can most easily be described as a cross between Queer as Folk and dystopian BBC drama Years and Years. The focus is on a pair of neighbors in Manchester: Leo (Alan Cumming), a vivacious gay bar owner on Canal Street, and Clive (David Morrissey), a conservative electrician with two teenage sons.