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Looking at the playing-field of human sexuality, we're terribly good when it comes to checking out the far end (you know, the bit where most of the procreation takes place) and viewing it in varying degrees of grey. You know, that whole 'Well, no one's 100% straight, are they?' thing, and all the attendant malarkey. Straight men, we freely accept, sometimes like to 'experiment'. They get 'curious'. They stand there (well, in the 'wish-fulfilment' section of our imagination at least) with only four pints of export-strength separating them from their first shot of man-on-man. And we're more than fine with that. If we're perfectly honest, it gives us the horn.

At our end of the field, however, the tendency (and it's a more-than-mildly militant one) is to see things rather more in black and white. Gay men, you see, don't 'experiment'. Not with the opposite sex, at least. And should they even consider doing so, that's it: membership revoked, hand in your piercings at the front desk, and wait for the Community Police to stamp "Traitor" on your forehead before commencing your lifelong exile. Overstated? Ask Tom Robinson if we're not right.

With the above in mind, you can fair imagine the advance response to the news that Queer As Folk creator, Russell T Davies, has penned a new series for ITV, in which a gay man (Bob, played by Jonathon Creek's Alan Davies) falls in love with a straight woman (Rose, played by Clocking Off's Lesley Sharpe). Bob And Rose is the show, and no, it hasn't escaped Russell's attention that this unpredictable twist on the 'Boy meets girl' genre represents yet another nail in the coffin of his relationship with certain sectors of the gay community. "That said," he sighs, "you're actually talking about a level of response that's stupid to begin with. People who are looking for trouble, almost. Or those who are too fucking stuck in their ghetto to look at it freely. But then," he finishes with a chuckle, "once you've been through the response to Queer As Folk, you've been through everything."

If he sounds confident, it's not without good reason. Actually make that two very good reasons. Firstly, Bob And Rose - if we can suspend our well-honed political responses for just one second - is an excellent show. A very funny, very touching love story. Secondly, and equally importantly, it's a true love story, one that had Manchester's gay scene buzzing with talk of this man who - people wrongly assumed - wasn't that gay. Yes, he fell in love with a woman, but yes, he still considered himself gay. "I didn't even know him that well," confesses Russell, "until we ended up at a dinner party together, and it got to one O'clock in the morning, I was completely pissed, and got to ask all the questions I'd been dying to ask, you know, like 'How do you have sex with her?', 'How do you get a hard-on?', 'Don't you miss men?' and 'How gay are you really?' All that stuff. And I came away from this long night absolutely ashamed of myself, because it was real - he loved her."

The six-part series comes to us from Manchester-based Red productions, home of Queer As Folk and Clocking Off. Producer Nicola Shindler, like Russell, has survived her fifteen minutes of evisceration for Queer As Folk, but wasn't about to let that experience put her off. "We knew the risks we were taking with this story," she insists. "You know, 'Good woman saves gay man' kind of stuff. But that's so not the story, and hopefully people will recognise that. The important thing is that Bob is gay: he's not bisexual, he's not experimenting, he's a gay man. I just thought if we could pull this one off it was going to be brilliant. Every good idea is tricky - and there's nothing wrong with a bit of a challenge."

It's worth noting that Red is also busily working on a new sitcom for the BBC, written by and starring Queer As Folk's Anthony Cotton ("It's very camp, and very dirty. Like, frighteningly dirty," confirms Nicola, with undisguised glee) the obvious question being 'Just how gay is this company?' "Oh, not even vaguely," she smiles. "I do good scripts, regardless of anyone's sexuality - I couldn't care less what it's representing, so long as it's a good script. And Clocking Off was pretty damn straight. So no," she grins, "I don't just mess about with those silly poofs all the time."

As far as Bob And Rose is concerned, she shares the same view as pretty much all concerned with the production. "I just want everyone in the world to like it," she explains. "It's just a beautiful romance, and how often do you see something that uncynical on television these days? I love romances, but it's funny as well."

The show's calibre, then, is not in question. The only potential sticking point really comes down to the viewer's need to apply labels to characters, characters who - in this case - have a teflon-coated resistance to any such endeavour. Lesley Sharp (Rose) finds that whole pigeon-holing thing largely irrelevant: "It's kind of crazy saying someone is heterosexual, someone is gay, someone is bi, whatever," she frowns. "You know, you put these labels on people and they're labels that are there to be broken out of. The tag of sexuality that you put on people is a kind of convenience."

Russell, on the other hand, sees things differently. "I think labels are important," he insists. "It's very easy for us to be out and proud and loud in Media-land, but if you're working in a car-factory, in the closet, go home to have a wank over the Internet, that kind of thing, then your label's very important. If we're honest, life is very label-led for most people. I like labels. 'Hello, I'm gay' - I love saying that. It's actually really important."

All of which kind of suggests that there's a huge concern among the team about the perception of Bob's relationship with Rose. There isn't. If Queer As Folk had one lesson to offer, it was to look beyond the labels. And arguably, it took the gay community a little longer to get their heads round that than the heterosexual world, but everyone eventually 'got it'. As far as Bob And Rose goes, the commissioning people at ITV certainly got it, and very quickly too. "They actually commissioned it in two days flat," beams Russell. "They read it on the Monday, commissioned it on Wednesday, no hassle, no fuss."

Of course, tradition dictates that you don't get an ITV commission without a big name actor attached to the pitch. And while the part of Bob wasn't specifically written for Alan Davies, Russell knew very early on that he was the rightest possible choice for the role. "Alan is not macho, and that's very rare in a straight leading man," he explains. "He's light, he's funny... he's not camp at all, but he's got just the right testosterone level. Plus he's clever - when we discussed it, he understood it. And 90% of being a good actor is just intelligence. Nicola and I spent three hours with him, and we went away thinking, well that's it - that's the simplest bit of casting we've ever done. And he is very, surprisingly brilliant."

The second female role, that of Bob's platonic (yet ever-optimistic) best-friend Holly was landed by Spaced's Jessica Stevenson, a woman who's plainly made her mark on Russell. "Oh my god, how brilliant is she?," he splutters. "She's got a brain the size of Mount Everest. She is so fucking clever. She's absolutely unique, bloody gorgeous and mad as a hatter - but that brilliant kind of 'mad': having a conversation with her is like slaloming around a ski-slope and not having a clue where you're supposed to be going, because her brain has this tendency to just explode and shot off in different directions all at once."

You could never accuse Russell T Davies of understatement or lack of enthusiasm. Even though he's not actually working on Anthony Cotton's sitcom, he's visibly buzzing at the prospect of seeing it made: "It's fucking mental," he grins. "It's going to be a monster. I swear to you, Queer as Folk and Bob And Rose will look like straight TV next to this. I'm going to sit on the sidelines, and if I don't come out of it with a play about how a camp gay man exploded into total stardom, then I might as well give up my job."

He doesn't mean that. Russell is an impossibly busy man, his next project being a nice, non-contentious (ahem) tale about the Son Of God. "It's called The Second Coming," he reveals. "A drama about Jesus returning to Manchester as an ordinary bloke. That was chucked out by Channel 4 and - lo and behold - picked up by ITV. Two 90-minute episodes. It'll be out in Autumn 2002, and it's going to be a fucking nightmare to shoot - every scene's got about 2000 people in it."

It's hard not to love Russell T Davies. If only because everyone else seems to feel the same way. Lesley Sharp beamingly describes him as "A good deed in a naughty world", Alan Davies calls him "a joy to work with" while Nicola Shindler, who arguably knows him best, is clearly one of his biggest fans. "Russell pretends the inside of his mind is so dark," she smiles, "but he's obviously just a big softie, don't let anyone tell you any different. You'd almost think he was gay," she smiles, naughtily. "But he's not. Obviously."

Alan Davies/Bob

So - did you find it hard to get your head around this idea of a gay man falling for a straight woman?

Actually, no. Russell told me it was based on someone he knew, so that was fine. Actually there's a friend of mine who was straight when I met her at University, then she was a lesbian for a long time, and just as we started shooting Bob And Rose, she started seeing this guy. Who'd been gay up till then. That just helped - you know, knowing that this kind of thing actually happens.

Did you have any political thoughts about Bob's dilemma?

I wouldn't say it was 'political', but it's quite important that his relationship with Rose doesn't get portrayed as a better alternative, or as 'being rescued'. Very important, actually, because Bob's quite happy where he is. He's not unhappy being gay, and he's never questioned that. I certainly didn't want people thinking 'Oh they can have a gay male lead on ITV so long as he gets off with a girl.' Because it just isn't like that.

When the writer of Queer As Folk approaches you to play a gay man, do you immediately worry about rimming scenes and so on?

You know, I hadn't actually seen Queer As Folk, so I went out and bought the box set, and sat and watched it before meeting with Russell. I thought it was terrifcally good. It's the same as Bob And Rose - the story starts immediately and just flies along. Smart, interesting, funny characters. And I knew the actors in Queer As Folk were straight, so I thought, well, any gay stuff I have to do in Bob and Rose sort of pales into insignificance compared to what they had to get up to [chuckles].

It's not, perhaps, the kind of role the public expects to see you in...

Oh I think there'll be people who reckon I'm just trying to be shocking, or just trying to change my image... I hate any statement that begins with 'Oh, he's just...' It's all rubbish. People will be completely preoccupied with the gay thing, though. And because I have to kiss men, they think I'm doing it to shock. And some of them won't cope. I'll get some homophobic reaction, I'm sure.

How did the Canal Street scene welcome you?

I used to get asked in the clubs if I was gay or if I was just 'sight-seeing' [chuckles]. I did get asked if I was a tourist. But I liked it there - if we did manage to persuade anyone from the crew to go for a drink, we'd always go to Canal Street. We liked Via Fossa, we liked Spirit, we liked Velvet... I didn't find it intimidating. In fact it was less aggravation and less hassle for me than I might get in a rowdy... well, I'm loathe to call them 'Straight Bars', but I suppose that's what they are.

It must have been quite a learning curve.

I went over to The Comedy Store one evening - there's a couple of huge bars next door, grim as anything. You know, packed with drunk blokes and girls sticking together for protection in numbers... that whole predator/prey thing. What I noticed, when I went to Cruz 101 on a no-women night, was that it was two sets of predators competing, really. There's not much of a chase. If you're a desirable young gay man you can walk in there and take your pick, really. But I really did like the gay village. I was made to feel really welcome, there was a little bit of mild piss-taking. I'd go out with Joe, the producer, and people would come up and say 'Hmm, so is this your new boyfriend?' and he'd do nothing to deter them from that view. Just to see how I coped with being flirted with by very camp people.

And how did you cope?

Well, I just blushed a bit. Did what anyone does when they're being flirted with, you know, 'Ooh stop it'

There's an excellent scene in the show where Bob loses interest in a potential shag when he realises the guy knows all the moves to Steps' version of Tragedy.

I loved that. After we'd finished filming, I went to Mardi Gras and I was standing right at the side of the stage when Steps were on. They went into the very same routine, and I was howling with laughter. I phoned Russell on the mobile, and held it up to the speaker for him. They take that single onto a whole new level, I think.

How many tabloid journalists have asked you what it's like to kiss a man so far?

Oh I get asked that all the time. What do you say to that? 'It's sort of like kissing a woman, only not quite as soft'? Oh, I don't know. Initially I was a bit concerned with that myself.

Has anyone questioned your suitability for the role yet?

Somebody said to me the other day 'Shouldn't they get a gay actor to play that part?' I asked them to name one. Then you get that horrible, eerie, pin-drop silence. Which famous gay actor should play it? Yes, of course there are loads of gay actors - but short of Anthony Sher and Simon Callow, we're not exactly overrun by out, confident actors. We've mostly got scared, nervous, hidden gay actors. It's not fair on them to require them to play a role like this to prove to themselves or to their friends that they're comfortable with it... This industry is frighteningly conservative at times. I don't know, it's a mess. A horrible, loathsome mess, and I hate it.