Russell T Davies’s Tip Toe, a fine new drama on Starz, begins at the end. Leo Struther, a gay Manchester bar owner played with phenomenal grace by Alan Cumming, is hanging dead from a streetlight outside his own house. A woman screams. His neighbor, Clive Goss, stands on his porch, breathing heavily. It is a cold, brutal image, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Then, as so many series do nowadays, the story goes back in time—ten days, to be precise—to show us how Leo got there. The technique might feel familiar, but Davies is not interested…

On 6 October 2026, Kenya’s Ministry of Health made a grim announcement that many had been dreading: the country had recorded its first confirmed case of Ebola. The patient was a Kenyan national who had been living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the epicenter of what would soon become the worst Ebola epidemic in that country’s history. He had travelled through Uganda and arrived in Nairobi, where he died. The announcement was a single sentence in a government briefing, but it carried the weight of every fear that had been building for months. Health authorities moved quickly, quarantining…