Arts

A Canadian drama about two in-the-closet ice hockey players who fall for one another has turned into a hit — with straight women in particular

Just wait for the end of episode five. How many times did I hear that – said with a moist-eyed sigh – over Christmas and new year as friends and strangers at parties in New York alighted on the craze of Heated Rivalry, exchanging thoughts (so many thoughts!), delight, jokes, amazement and criticism about the six-part series?

Somehow, out of nowhere with no hype, a steamy gay love story, adapted from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novel series, commanded mass adoration and conversation in its native Canada, where it became the most-watched original series on the streamer Crave. In the US it became the top-rated non-animated acquired series on HBO Max. Everyone seemed to be watching it – LGBT people, yes, but also huge numbers of straight women, not to mention a significant cohort of straight men.

The evidence of its impact is visible online: there are videos of bars filled with people watching the show on big screens, whooping at the show’s most pivotal and cheer-worthy scenes; gay men emotionally hailing the show for its importance (some humorously dressed up in ice hockey gear, claiming to be ready to head to the rink to find a partner); and those straight women — a huge element of its audience — weeping and cheering over a very unstraight romance.

There’s the grandson watching with his wry grandmother and the imagined TV pitching session brainstorming possible follow-up dramas: “Gay Darts?” Then there are the straight men losing it over the show, particularly the guy watching the show with his wife, passing gruffly appreciative comments over everything on screen.

It will soon be apparent if Britain – with its long lineage of primetime LGBT stories and characters, including EastEnders, Coronation Street, Queer as Folk and Heartstopper— falls under the same spell. The first episode premiered on Sky Atlantic on Saturday night.

In a real world of unrelenting grimness, the charged romance of the handsome rival ice hockey players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) has managed to unite and captivate. The show is sometimes cheesy, proudly sexual and also profound, especially in its examination of living in the closet and the power of coming to terms with who you are and coming out, set in the macho-sports world of ice hockey.

Jacob Tierney, who developed, wrote and directed the series, has said he wanted to craft something “unabashedly joyful… This is an actual Harlequin romance.”

Tierney said he had also wanted to take Reid’s romance novels “emotionally seriously”. “This has a happy ending,” he said. “This is about two boys in love and a lot of sex.”

Shane is Japanese-Canadian and gay (something that becomes apparent as he tries to date a famous actress), Ilya is Russian (a place where homophobia is sanctioned in law) and bisexual. Shane is initially taciturn and nervous, Ilya more flirty and mischievous. Although the story crackles with the chemistry between Williams and Storrie – and as their joint interviews have shown, that chemistry thrums off-screen — there is something extremely traditional about Heated Rivalry that perhaps explains its mass appeal. At its heart it’s a love story, where you root for its starstruck couples to be together despite the various forces, internal and external, that test their love and attraction.

Heated Rivalry isn’t all sex (as proudly filmed and shown as it is), just as it isn’t simply the Shane and Ilya show. The show’s secondary love story – between the older ice hockey star Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and the juice bar barista Kip Grady (Robbie GK) — became in just two intense episodes as devotedly embraced by fans as the smouldering rivalry, then yearning, then longing, then lust, then love and romance, between Shane and Ilya.

As saturated social media feeds full of fan-made videos, memes and general hysteria have charted, Heated Rivalry has become a fast pop-culture phenomenon, making instant celebrities of its actors. Last week Williams made his debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, crouching on the floor with the host to show him the best ice hockey warm-up moves – the unspoken joke was that the men’s poses mirrored the show’s raunchiness.

Williams and Storrie have thus far declined to discuss their own sexual identities and desires. Asked in an interview whether they felt the need to talk about their personal lives, Tierney intervened on their behalf. “I don’t think there’s any reason to get into that stuff,” he said. “You can’t ask questions like that when you’re casting, right? It’s actually against the law. So what you have to gauge is somebody’s enthusiasm and willingness to do the work.”

Unsurprisingly, a second season of Heated Rivalry has been commissioned (transmission date unconfirmed), reportedly drawn from Reid’s novel The Long Game, focusing on Shane and Ilya’s decision to go public and the pressures that come with that. Williams has promised it will be “hotter, wetter and longer” adding to Fallon to expect “some big baddies” and joking: “They all die.”

Until then, just wait for the end of episode five.