Canada's Unexpected Hot Export: A Gay Hockey Romance

Canada's largest media company has scored a hit nobody saw coming: a gay hockey romance with intimate sex scenes that begin just 13 minutes into episode one. Heated Rivalry, a six-episode drama about two feuding pro players who can't stay out of each other's beds, has become Bell Media's most successful original streaming series to date since it dropped on Thanksgiving, per the Wall Street Journal. The show, licensed by HBO Max in the US and available on Crave in Canada, has pulled in an average of 8 million US viewers per episode, with HBO Max saying about two-thirds of them are women. Bell says a third of Crave viewers rewatched episodes, and more than 15% watched an episode at least five times.

The series, adapted from novels by Canadian author Rachel Reid, tracks golden-boy Montreal rookie Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and edgy Boston forward Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie). The on-screen sex is tamer than in the books, executives say, and there's no full-frontal nudity. But the sex remains frequent and explicit in choreography, making the series notable for centering queer intimacy at a scale usually reserved for straight couples. Bell Media chose to fully finance the show, rather than use Canada's usual co-production model, to keep control and preserve the novels' tone after some potential partners pushed to tone down the sex or add characters, the Journal reports.

Bell Media president Sean Cohan says the company was hunting for a Canadian answer to Netflix's Bridgerton and had confidence that trusted showrunner Jacob Tierney, co-creator of Bell Media's Letterkenny and Shoresy series, could produce another hit. After seeing early cuts, the company even moved up the premiere by three months to capture holiday binge time. The deal with HBO Max to air the show in the US was inked just weeks before launch. The surprise hit has triggered a wave of online chatter, confronting hockey's history of homophobia, writes Sue Carter at the Guardian. It's also brought a bump in visibility for its once-unknown leads, now set to be Olympic torchbearers, and even a nod from Canada's culture minister. But there's a catch for fans who binge too fast: Season 2 isn't expected until 2027.