It's the most wonderful time of the year. And if you're watching "Heated Rivalry" on HBO Max, it's also the sexiest.
The Canadian ice hockey drama (new episodes streaming Fridays through Dec. 26) has been heating up TV screens over the last several weeks, focusing on the steamy, secret romance between rising star professional hockey players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie). The pair play a cat-and-mouse game of sexual tension, sneaking off to hotel rooms whenever they're in each other's orbit as years of hockey seasons go by. There's nudity and no shortage of sex scenes.
Most TV series cut away from sex, particularly gay sex. If series shows too much sex, it risks accusations of only existing to titillate viewers, or that the show is exploiting actors' bodies. If it doesn't focus enough on sex, some will argue it's treating sex like it's something to be ashamed of. It's a fine line.
But the fact a very graphic series featuring gay characters is getting a ton of interest (from a largely female audience, according to the series' director) suggests maybe we aren't as sex-averse as some corners of the internet would have us believe. It's now No. 3 on the HBO Max top 10 charts, as of Dec. 10, up from No. 6 just a week ago. Series of this nature have catapulted into the zeitgeist before – "Queer as Folk," "True Blood" and more recently "Fellow Travelers" – but not with such meme-worthy content flooding social media feeds fueling its popularity, and not in an era coinciding with the rise of trad wives and more demure young people.
