Things nobody had on their bingo cards for 2026: a sexually explicit Canadian ice hockey drama becoming the year\u2019s first breakout TV hit. But so it has come to pass, with Heated Rivalry (Sky Atlantic\/Now) burning up a storm in North America and now crossing the Atlantic to a receptive audience eager to binge on a tale of forbidden queer love against the backdrop of ice hockey, a sport that, to outsiders, seems to consist of 30 per cent action, 70 per cent punch-ups.<\/p>\n
As the Jilly Cooper<\/a>-esque title more or less declares outright, Heated Rivalry is a romp and a caper. It certainly should not be confused with a deep meditation on the often knuckle-dragging sexual politics of professional sport (just last week, Celta Vigo player Borja Iglesias was subjected to homophobic abuse by rival fans in Spain \u2013 having painted his nails).<\/p>\n The central and indeed extremely heated affair is between Canadian Shane (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya (Connor Storrie), who embark on a series of dalliances whenever they are in the same town for hockey tournaments. Part of the attraction, it is suggested, is that they are from opposing worlds. Shane is a bankable face of Canadian hockey \u2013 with a Rolodex endorsement and managers who want him to become a sort of David Beckham<\/a> on ice skates.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a very different trajectory from that of Ilya, who is bankrolling his grasping, ungrateful family back in Russia and whose girlfriend is oblivious to the fact that he is hooking up with another hockey player.<\/p>\n There are lots of sex scenes, and these are firmly in the category of \u201csteamy chaste\u201d \u2013 loads of bare bums and what have you, but nothing very shocking or X-rated. These sequences have apparently gone down a storm with viewers \u2013 who, according to the show\u2019s producers, are overwhelmingly straight women.<\/p>\n That has made Heated Rivalry, adapted from the novel by Rachel Reid, controversial in some quarters \u2013 gay actor Jordan Firstman accused it of pandering to audiences who \u201cwant to see two straight hockey players pretending to be gay\u201d. But the series\u2019 creator, Jacob Tierney, has pushed back against claims that he has cynically repackaged gay identity for a straight female viewership.<\/p>\n \u201cWe as queer people need to check our messaging,\u201d Tierney told the Hollywood Reporter. \u201cThe things that we decide women can or can\u2019t do can be really exhausting. Women are allowed to write about men. They\u2019re allowed to write about gay men. The question should be, how are they writing about us? Is it with empathy?\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018It\u2019s important for ice hockey players to be clean!\u2019 I jot down during Heated Rivalry\u2019s shower sceneOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n In, truth, Heated Rivalry isn\u2019t made to withstand that level of discourse. It\u2019s erotic filler \u2013 capering, lightweight and, so say the ratings, hugely bingeable. Nobody would mistake it for quality drama \u2013 but in a world where every second new hit is a Harlan Coben bacchanalia<\/a> of plot-holes and cardboard dialogue or a Ryan Murphy<\/a> shock-fest, it at least dares to be different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things nobody had on their bingo cards for 2026: a sexually explicit Canadian ice hockey drama becoming the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[289,93,61,60,44250,4829,127826],"class_list":{"0":"post-256769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jilly-cooper","13":"tag-lgbtq","14":"tag-now-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}