Heated Rivalry – a television series chronicling the romance of two closeted gay hockey players – arrived on the scene in late November and soon skyrocketed to become the #1 series on HBO Max week after week, besting the likes of It: Welcome to Derry and I Love LA. Moreover, episode five, titled “I’ll Believe in Anything,” became the second-best-reviewed episode in television history, behind Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias,” on IMDb. So how did a sex-heavy series, adapted from a series of romance novels by Rachel Reid, break out of queer spaces and become a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon?
I arrived at Heated Rivalry by mere fact that it was a queer piece of media. There was not a ton of marketing behind it (at the time), but this was not all that dissimilar from other queer-centered film and television that came before it. You see, queer people often have to search deeper to find media that showcases themselves and their community. These projects are often distributed by the smallest of companies – Wolfe Media and TLA Releasing will only mean something to those who know – or relegated to prestige distributors like HBO (Looking) or Showtime (Fellow Travelers) and marketed to that niche.
It became apparent that the fanbase of the novels was larger and much more widespread than I could have imagined, and the television show has poured gasoline on that corner of the fandom. Still, I have been overwhelmingly surprised by how many non-queer people have arrived at this show; never in my career has corporate water-cooler talk centered around a gay, sex-filled romance. I have been doing a lot of reflecting on why Heated Rivalry has broken out of the LGBT sphere and into the cultural mainstream, and ultimately came up with three reasons.
One: the HBO Max factor. Access is important for a show like this to thrive. The sheer accessibility of Heated Rivalry to over 100 million global subscribers is scale those aforementioned distributors could never reach. But it also feels like HBO backing this program makes non-queer people bringing conversations about the show into their spaces less taboo. I cannot tell you how many times I heard, “There is a gay hockey show that has a lot of sex in it… but it’s on HBO.” HBO has never had an issue amassing huge audiences with horny subject matter – think Game of Thrones, Euphoria, or even 2009’s Hung.
And it is the HBO-factor that gives people permission to talk about Heated Rivalry. The word-of-mouth, by extension, around the show is incredible and queer media is being discussed in forums it has seldom reached before. Crave – the Canadian-based network that backed the show – noted viewership has risen 400% week-over-week since the premiere.
Second: the show is genuinely well made. Those who have consumed queer media know the quality can be all over the board. A lot of that boils down to financing: projects with predominantly LGBT subject matter often receive substantial less budget than other pieces of media. Heated Rivalry rises above; from a pure television-making lens, there seems to be investments across all areas of production. Jacob Tierney – who worked on the Hulu-distributed and well-received Letterkenny – serves as showrunner for Heated Rivalry. The story, direction, production design, and music all come together in genre-defying ways. Specifically, I’m often impressed with the shot direction across the board.
The series was also bold enough to feature a bottle episode in a six-episode season – a huge swing, in my opinion, that seems to have paid off. Some people I’ve talked to denote episode three as their favorite. It’s also fun to see a Harrison remix of t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” break the top ten on iTunes following its episode four bow. So in short, things are firing on all cylinders for Heated Rivalry, something that cannot be said of a lot of the television slop being produced now.
Third: the story is resonant. To get one matter out of the way, I have not read any of Rachel Reid’s books, so I had no idea what to expect from a story perspective. But those worried that Heated Rivalry is all sex and no substance should not fear. Like relationships to any character-driven film or television series, you get to go on a journey with Shane and Ilya, played by relative newcomers Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. I would like to take this opportunity to say both actors nail the performances and their characterizations are well realized. Specifically, Storrie does a stunning job emoting while acting as a Russian hockey player (Storrie is not Russian, but has me convinced). It’s stunning to think he could be on his way to an Emmy nomination for this performance next year.
All that said, by the back half of the season I was disarmed by how well Jacob Tierney and company led us to huge emotional payoffs. That’s where Heated Rivalry suddenly hits universality, and why it’s striking a chord with all people – not just queer people. There is real emotional intimacy on display in the latter part of the series, and the struggles and revelations these characters work through – vulnerability, belonging, emotional preservation – hit, and they hit big.
It’s remarkable Heated Rivalry has become a cultural phenomenon the way it has. It’s not only one of the horniest shows on television, but one of the most provocative LGBT pieces of media I’ve seen in a long time. Of course due to its overwhelming success, there is now a confirmed season two, with spinoffs being explored, etc, etc. But mainly, I hope this paves the way for bolder LGBT storytelling on similarly large stages. Queer people want to come out of the shadows and be able to exist in the culture unabashedly – loud, complicated, erotic, romantic, and unapologetically human, without the need to sanitize itself for anyone else’s comfort. So, if it takes two guys and some hockey sticks to get there, I’m all for it.
