Everyone's obsessed with Heated Rivalry. Could it change how we see gay sex on screen?
CBC
This article contains spoilers for the show Heated Rivalry.
In the locker room shower. A hotel room in Montreal. A bathroom at an awards gala.
The boys of Heated Rivalry are hooking up a lot — in TV-defying detail, and in lots of different venues.
The Crave original based on a Canadian book series about rival hockey players and their secret off-ice romance has generated buzz from viewers for its explicit sex scenes (and its heartfelt love story alike).
TikTok is awash with users too obsessed with the show to think about anything else, spicy edits of heartthrob characters Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, and brave fans watching the series with their parents.
The show’s stars — Hudson Williams, who plays Shane, and Connor Storrie, who plays Ilya — got matching "sex sells" tattoos to mark their work on the production. And they seem to be dead right.
Crave says Heated Rivalry became its most-watched original series debut within the first week of its release, and the most recent episode is the second-highest ranked episode of TV of all time on IMDB. A second season of the show also got the green light earlier this month.
But fans and TV critics say the show is more than just good entertainment. It's resonating because it pushes the boundaries around how much queer sex can be shown on popular TV, depicting intimacy that feels true to life and maintaining a compelling love story — while still being incredibly steamy.
One reason the show stands out is because it isn't shy in its depictions of gay sex. It's something that's rare for a mainstream production.
“Traditionally … it's a lot of suggestion, perhaps a lot of fading to black,” said freelance culture writer David Mack. “It's like the [1950s], with people lying in bed with a cigarette afterwards or something like that."
That makes Heated Rivalry's scenes "very shocking" in comparison, he said.
For example, the first sexual act takes place a mere 14 minutes into the first episode. Many of the scenes are long, with a few unfolding with no cutaways for the duration of the act. That leaves little to the imagination, said Mack, who co-reviewed Heated Rivalry’s spicy scenes for Slate. (He gave them a 10/10 on the horny scale, if you were curious.)
"From the moment [Ilya] opens the door to the moment he leaves, you are there in that room with them," Mack said of the characters' first hookup. "So it feels incredibly intimate to be witnessing it."
Brendan Shust, a Canadian fan who is gay himself, said he's enjoying how the show's director, Jacob Tierney, included a wide range of intimate encounters. He's been excitedly following the series after first bingeing the books by Rachel Reid in the spring.
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