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Even before it dropped on HBO Max last month, this new drama series about two horny gay rival ice hockey players shagging each other off the rink while fighting for sporting supremacy on it was generating its own steam. Perhaps it was creator Jacob Tierney’s terse response to questions of his leading actors’ sexualities while on a recent promotional tour. Or that the show is based on a series of concupiscent novels by Canadian writer Rachel Reid that centre hockey (!), and which ride the current trend for “hate-to-love” romance driving the kids crazy. Actually, it’s probably just all the hot gay sex.
Because Heated Rivalry does get heated. One minute aloof Russian player Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) is making eyes at meek local champion Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), the next they’re wanking in the shower together. Then getting blowjobs in classy hotel suites. Pretty soon, the boys are going at it hammer and tongs – broken at regular intervals by months-long ellipses, waiting for the hockey circuit to bring them back into each others’ arms. This is also convenient for sexual tension, which would otherwise have to be developed through character and dialogue.
So much heat. If only they had somewhere they could cool down.
Actually, for a show ostensibly about ice hockey – a sport that lends itself to rousing storytelling, as Inside Out 2 beautifully demonstrated – there’s curiously little of it on display here. Tierney seems more interested in the ambivalent thrill of down-low fucking than any exploration of masculinity or homoeroticism in sport. The guys don’t even use their uniforms when having sex – which I find highly improbable.
The sex scenes aren’t quite as explicit as the pearl-clutching critics might have you believe, although they seem to provide a valuable cardio workout to augment the boys’ training (they make the sweaty scenes from Challengers look like dry humping). The problem is the actors’ ludicrously sculpted bodies resemble store mannequins dipped in vats of lube, and the rigorous on-set intimacy coordinators seem to have sucked all the spontaneity from the action, so the effect has the strange waxiness you get in a Bret Easton Ellis novel without his concomitant satirical savagery. It brings to mind the puppets fucking in Team America: World Police.
When they’re not boning each other senseless, Rozanov and Hollander make for dreary, monosyllabic company – and their stormy sex life hardly constitutes “hate-to-love” romance, given they’re in the sack within the opening 10 minutes and actively encourage each other’s careers.
Perhaps in acknowledgment of this lack of dramatic material, the third episode ignores the central couple altogether to focus on a teammate, fellow closeted gay Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and his dalliance with local barista Kip (Robbie GK). Yes, every single professional ice hockey player in the world is secretly, torturously gay (but also totally up for it).
If only this love affair were more interesting than the previous one, or at least had some thematic consequence. Alas, Scott and Kip (Skip?) are saddled with a tedious, emotionally remote story arc and dialogue so banal (“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in a long time”), the whole episode starts to feel like an unfortunate detour, skippable.
Performances are generally wooden, which might suit the taciturn nature of professional sportspeople but creates a drag on pace and mood. The key exception is Storrie as the mercurial Russian – who steals the third episode with 20 seconds of screen time – bursting with charisma, machismo and brawn, but also something sad and wounded. He’s too good for the material, and could use a stronger sparring partner, who is easily mistaken for his hockey stick.
We’re only halfway through, but I already get a sinking feeling about Heated Rivalry. It comes out of a wave of gay-themed romcom material – from Heartstopper to Red, White and Royal Blue – that seems content to exploit gay culture without understanding it in a meaningful way. There is a weird kind of fetish in these works that desexes gay men just enough to make them palatable, like pets for young women (and it’s largely young women reading these books and driving sales).
Heated Rivalry might have raunchier sex than its rivals – not difficult in Heartstopper’s case, where no one has even heard of a blowjob – but it trades in the same bullshit platitudes and cheap stereotypes about gay men as they do. Maybe it matters less that Tierney’s actors could be straight than the cosplay going on in the source material. The show may help you get your rocks off, but will it respect you in the morning?
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Heated Rivalry is airing weekly on HBO Max in Australia and US now, with a UK release date yet to be announced.
