Tip Toe review – David Morrissey is magnificent in Russell T Davies’s brutal new drama

Refugees, homophobia, gay rights, even Trump, are all covered in this opener, which occasionally leans towards agitprop. But with excellent performances, and RTD’s storytelling brilliance, things really build from here

We open on an ordinary suburban street. A teenage boy is gazing out of a window. A woman – his mother? – is screaming. A man – his father? – is standing in the garden gazing unfocused at whatever lies beyond. The camera draws back to reveal a scene so shocking it hardly computes. Then we flashback to 10 days earlier to begin to understand how they, and the other figures in the scene, got here.

So, with characteristic bravura, begins Russell T Davies’s new drama, Tip Toe. The man in the garden is Clive (David Morrissey), an electrician with two sons – 16-year-old college student George (Jackson Connor) and 25-year-old Saul (Joseph Evans), who helps him in the business when there is enough work to go around – and enduring an unhappy marriage to Marie (Pooky Quesnel).