Russell T Davies: ‘As we face a Reform government, the gay community should be revolting in terror…’

Russell T Davies is in his Manchester writing office when Big Issue calls. There is a Bafta on a shelf behind him, alongside hundreds of books. “I’ve read them all, test me!” he booms.

This is where the magic happens – a space away from his home in Wales where he goes to write. A window on the city that has been the setting for so many of his greatest works.

We are here, officially, to talk about Cucumber, Tofu and Banana. It’s 10 years since Davies launched this audacious, modern and inclusive trio of shows to much fanfare – one big gay Channel 4 drama series, an anthology of LGBTQ+ character studies on E4, and eight frank-as-fuck documentaries exploring sex.

Awards followed, though big audiences failed to materialise.

“It’s not spoken of as a success, but let’s just remember that it won me a Bafta as a writer, which is the greatest honour of my life,” Davies says.

“It’s a series I look back on with great delight. The thing that maybe didn’t work for audiences is that it is kind of format-less. It’s just about life. And that was a very bold move. It makes sense in its last line!”

In that sense, it built on the writer’s earlier work on Queer as Folk – a series that was groundbreaking and is seen as shocking, though not to Davies.

“Queer as Folk was provocative and shocking to some people simply by its existence,” he says. “But not in terms of its story. It just showed the everyday lives of normal Manchester men, a 15-year-old boy, and their families and friends. Before writing it, I was imagining it should start with the body of a dead rent boy floating on the canal. High drama, like a Harlan Coben thriller.

“But Kay Mellor had done that in portraying the lives of sex workers in Band of Gold, which was groundbreaking and compassionate and clever and innovative.

“So I was thinking, I can’t do that, I’m just going to take that out and write about all the bits in between. Cucumber was the same.

“We knew it wasn’t like Queer as Folk with, let’s face it, all the beautiful young men having sex. Cucumber was more middle-aged and dark and more nuanced. I’m glad we didn’t force that kind of narrative onto it.

“But Cucumber also might be the first show ever to mention the word ‘side’ in its dialogue. Now that’s a category on Grindr. The gay audience is resistant to opening up. I thought it might prompt a bigger dialogue about physically what we do to each other. But it didn’t.”

Read more:

• From Queer as Folk to Doctor Who: How Russell T Davies gave voice to a generation of queer people
• Russell T Davies on returning to Doctor Who, queer representation and ‘maddest’ episodes yet
• Russell T Davies on Nolly, It’s a Sin and bringing Kate Winslet back for Dark Season reunion

Did he expect to be celebrating Cucumber in 2025?

“It was my idea! I loved the Scene Festival so much last year – the atmosphere, the buzz, the people – and I wanted to come back,” he says. “So I looked at the calendar and saw it was ten years since Cucumber. So they had no choice. I will be here every year. I’ll be looking in my archives going, it’s 17 years since I wrote a lesbian vicar and we will celebrate that!”

A decade on from Cucumber, Davies is hard at work on another urgent landmark drama for Channel 4. When it airs next year, Tip Toe will build on his trilogy of shows for the channel which began with Queer as Folk in 1999 and continued with Cucumber before It’s a Sin, his astonishing evocation of the AIDS crisis in the UK, became his biggest hit and sparked a new conversation around HIV in this country.

Does he see them as his life’s work?

“What – am I dying? No, I do. There’s my Doctor Who world and my gay world. Because that’s everything else, really. Including A Very English Scandal and Years and Years.

“I feel like all those characters could bump into each other, more or less. There are links. The Hazel link between Cucumber and Queer as Folk very clearly. There are no links in Tip Toe but it’s the same streets. The same old Canal Street. And I like that.

“Looking back at Queer as Folk now, it really is so 1999. It takes the temperature of that time completely. Cucumber does the same. And so does Tip Toe – it is me checking in, saying, ‘Where are we now?’

“Cucumber shows a generation that’s lived through HIV, although it’s hardly mentioned. There’s a scene in a burger bar at 2am where you realise where Henry is coming from – the physical shame he carries with him, the social shame for someone who looked so out and proud in episode one. It’s a portrait of modern gay men as they were then. Actually, as they are now. Society doesn’t move that fast.”

But society is changing. And Davies is worried. So worried, he decamped to Manchester to write about it with a real sense of urgency and mission.

“Literally no one asked for Tip Toe,” he says. “I was technically busy on Doctor Who, but I was driven to this desk. I had to write it in Manchester. And I would have written it for free. It just had to be written.

“It’s funny. When Queer as Folk came out in 1999, if you’d said, what will gay rights be like in 2025, we’d have said, ‘Oh, it will all be marvellous. It’ll be sunshine and skipping down the street, hand in hand – gays, queers, lesbians, everyone.’

“And look at where we are. Things got better. But now things are rapidly and urgently getting worse. What happens in America always happens here – and as we look down the barrel of a Reform government, we, the gay community, queer community, should be revolting in terror and anger and action.”

If It’s a Sin was a timely reminder of the courage and activism shown by previous generations, Davies is looking for a return to that spirit. Pride as a protest more than a party.

“We do need that anger of the past. They’re out to get us. The president of the United States is literally out to get us, is discounting us. He would be happier with us invisible and gone, defunded, completely invisible if not biologically altered to become as straight as him,” he says.

“That is terrifying. Because he’s the leader of the free world, as we call it. I think we’ve got a kind of imaginary countdown to when he’s going to have that great big heart attack. And the bastard might not. What’s more, we should fear the people who will step in once he’s gone, all those invisible, powerful people who suddenly have a voice. They could be even worse.

“It’s scary. How much did we underestimate them? We thought they spent the past five years self-flagellating. No. They planned. Can you see the left planning now in America? Absolutely no sign of it. They should have their next candidate president-ready. They should be making speeches right now. Where are they?”

Is that what’s keeping him awake at night?

“The whole world is keeping all of us awake,” he says. “We are overwhelmed with big issues. Extraordinary times are coming. I love sitting and watching all the TikToks and AI videos, that soft, handsome image of gay people online with the kissing and the beauty.

“But I watch all these people and I’m thinking, I hope they’re prepared to fight, that younger generation that has no idea how they got there. And neither should they – they’re busy living their lives. I didn’t spend my youth looking back at World War Two. But I do think, are you prepared to fight? Because a fight is coming.”

Though the storylines are under wraps, Tip Toe might just show the frontlines of the culture war that has seen people radicalised into homophobia, transphobia and prejudice in recent years.

“Tip Toe is Queer as Folk crossed with Years and Years. That’s exactly what it is. I’m very proud of it,” says Davies. “It’s radical. It’s savage. And it’s hilarious.

“It is the strongest thing I’ve written – I do believe Queer As Folk, Cucumber, It’s a Sin and Tip Toe are the ones that will be on my gravestone.”

If you can bring back Doctor Who, be showrunner twice, and then it doesn’t make your greatest hits – that’s some going.

“I love Doctor Who, but I don’t own it. It’s not mine. So in the end, my heart will always be with the things that I own.”

And the elephant in the room? Doctor Who and its uncertain future? The inevitable question… what’s occurring?

Davies laughs.

“Behave!”

SCENE: Manchester’s LGBTQ+ Film and TV Festival runs from 15-21 August. 10 Years of Cucumber + In Conversation with Russell T Davies & Cast is on 20 August at New Century Hall. scenefestival.com

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