Heated Rivalry

The new show Heated Rivalry is a very sexy and very queer hockey romance streaming on HBO Max–and it’s a phenomenon. It follows archrival players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) as they carry on a clandestine affair off the ice. And since it’s based on a whole series of interconnected romance novels by Rachel Reid, it may be with us for a very long time. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:16Linda Holmes?

  Hi, Linda Holmes here. Somehow, we are almost at the end of 2025. And I'm going to be honest with you, it's been a pretty challenging year for NPR and local stations. But here's the thing, despite losing federal funding for public media, and despite all the attacks we've seen on the free press, we're still here for you. We are still independent, a critical right guaranteed by the First Amendment. And with your support, NPR will not be silent. Here at Pop Culture Happy Hour, we will continue keeping you company with thoughtful, engaging conversations about all the movies, TV, music, and more 2026 has in store. If you're already an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. We see you,

• 1:00Linda Holmes?

  and we're so grateful for you. If not, please join the community of public radio supporters right now before the end of the year at plus.npr.org. Signing up unlocks a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. End the year on a high note and invest in a public service that matters to you. Visit plus.npr.org today. Thanks.

• 1:32Linda Holmes?

  Whether you know it as the sexy hockey show, the hockey sexy show, or the extremely Canadian queer romance adaptation of the year, heated rivalry is a phenomenon.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  The story of two superstar professional hockey players carrying on a clandestine affair arrived on HBO Max in November. And since it's based on a whole series of interconnected romance novels, it may well be with us for a very long time. I'm Glen Weldon.

• 1:55Linda Holmes?

  And I'm Linda Holmes. And today, we're talking about heated rivalry on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 3:38Linda Holmes?

  Glenn, it is just the two of us today. Let's set the stage a little bit for this story. Heated Rivalry is based on one of a series of hockey romances from writer Rachel Reid. Specifically, it's based on the second book in the series, which follows Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, and Ilya Rosenoff, played by Connor Story.

• 4:00Linda Holmes?

  They are arch-rival players from before they even turn pro. And when they meet, they have an instant attraction. For years, they hook up behind the scenes while a public narrative develops that they are bitter rivals. It's not entirely clear early on whether they have feelings for each other beyond that desire to hook up. And they both consider going public with any relationship of any kind to be not an option. This show was developed by Jacob Tierney, who was one of the writers and executive producers of the sitcom Letter Kenny. Originally made for the Canadian streaming service Crave, its six-episode season is airing weekly on HBO Max, and it's already been renewed for another season. And if you've seen the show, this will not surprise you.

• 4:43Linda Holmes?

  But if you do need to know, there's a fair amount of sex on this show. There's a fair amount of explicit sex on this show. We are going to talk about it, so just be advised for your listening pleasure. Glenn, I am so glad we are getting together to talk about this show, which it sort of sneaked up on me a little. Tell me what you think.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  I think it snuck up on us all, yeah. There's a simple answer why this is taking off and a much more complicated one. Let's start with a simple one. It's hot. People like things that are hot. And my temptation is not to overthink it, but Linda Holmes, what are we here to do?

• 5:12Linda Holmes?

  Exactly.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  If not to overthink it. So let's get to it. Why it's hitting in the mainstream the way it is? I mean, I think we can't overlook the HBO Max of it all. It is readily accessible. If it had stayed on that Canadian streaming service Crave you mentioned, I don't know if we'd be having this conversation. I also think it's of the moment. There have been plenty of shows with explicit or explicit adjacent queer content, but they came out before social media, right? So Queer as Folk, The L Word, Noah's Ark, Dante's Cove, Only I Remember Dante's Cove for My Sins. Oz had several scenes, let's face it, that would have shown up in your feed if it was coming out now. And finally, and here's where I'm going to defer to you. I think the romance part's a big deal. Romance is a genre. Genres have conventions. Conventions become conventions because they work.

• 5:55Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  I don't read romance, but I do read genres where conventions and tropes set the parameters, right? Which is what they're supposed to do.

• 6:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Fantasy, science fiction, superheroes. What are superheroes, Linda Holmes, but tropes and spandex? So I know a trope when I see one, and I get excited when I see one. So as soon as we meet Ilya, the cocky, sneering, swaggering jerk who's hiding how much the homophobia of his family hurts him and makes him feel like he's can only be about the sex because he doesn't deserve love. Hello, Reiki McRakestein. Hi. Hey, you're a trope.

• 6:25Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  You take the boxes of the rake, but those boxes are boxes for a reason because they make him a hell of a lot of fun to watch. He's more fun to watch than Shane, who at one point we see reading a book called The Physics of Ice, which on one level, come on, and on the other level, that's funny.

• 6:43Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  That makes him a great contrast with Ilya. I think people are coming for the sex. They're staying for the characters. I have specific thoughts on why this seems to be hitting with gay men in a way that feels very new to me.

• 6:52Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  In a way that Red, White and World Blue didn't. But I want your take on why it's hitting so broadly in the culture.

• 6:57Linda Holmes?

  Well, I mean, I don't know that I can speak for the entire culture, but I will say what I like about it is how, you know, in the best genre shows, they feel both familiar and fresh. And that can be a really difficult thing to accomplish, right? And I think it feels familiar for, you know, some of the reasons that you mentioned, right? You know, you do have the guy willing to acknowledge kind of his feelings, but he's more direct about sex than Shane is. And then you have Shane, who's a little more, he's less experienced with sex, particularly with men than Ilya is. You know, those dynamics, any kind of opposites attract, as you sort of alluded to, that's all really familiar.

• 7:39Linda Holmes?

  What is not new to romance at all, but is maybe a little bit newer to television, is the use of the dynamic where the sex is first.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:51Linda Holmes?

  Right? Because in romance, you can have the sex happen at the beginning, you can have the sex happen in the middle, you can have the sex happen at the end. The idea that, you know, everything is just flirt, flirt, flirt until you finally have sex at the end is a kind of romance, right? It's not all of romance. But the way that it plays out here is, I think, fresh, particularly for TV, for a channel like HBO.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 8:17Linda Holmes?

  And even on something like Bridgerton, by the time that people have sex, they will usually have already acknowledged some feelings of some kind. Maybe not always, but often. And here, you really have the sex first.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:34Linda Holmes?

  And so then what they're trying to figure out is, am I happy with how it is? You know, you and I talked about whether this was a romance or a hookup show. And I think one of the distinctions is if they were hooking up and that seemed stable, right? It seemed like that was the, a logical endpoint and they were both perfectly happy with it. Then maybe it would be more of a hookup show. What makes it a romance to me is the underlying tension. You need longing, right?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 9:03Linda Holmes?

  You start to get that sense that like, in some cases, they want to be able to talk to each other maybe more than they would talk to each other if they were just hooking up. Not that people who hook up don't talk to each other, but you know what I'm saying? Like that maybe they're trying to have a different kind of relationship, but they're not sure, like, obviously neither one of them is sure if the other one wants that. And on top of that, as we mentioned in the intro, there's this underlying terror of what happens if people find out, which obviously presents a different challenge if you're talking about dating than if you are talking about hooking up, which they managed to do for a long period of time without anybody really finding out.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Well, you didn't want to speak for the culture. I'm going to speak for all middle aged gay men who are me.

• 9:49Linda Holmes?

  Yes, exactly. Who are you?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Who are me? And this is why it's taken off and why, I mean, this is really taking off. They're posting reaction videos and lip sync videos and reenactments. I think, not to repeat myself, but the HBO Max of it means we don't have to seek it out. We don't have to hear about it from some festival. It's not some shattered glass production that makes it out of a festival and may never make it out of a festival and get Wolf Video Distribution that maybe someday it'll show up on Tubi. No, this is HBO Max. And the reason most people are assuming it's hitting with gay men is the simplest one. It's also wrong, which this goes exactly to your point. Gay men find the show because they hear the dudes are hot and the sex is explicit. That's not really what's going on here. That doesn't explain this because Linda Holmes. Prepare to be shocked. I don't know if you got pearls. Prepare to clutch them. If gay men just wanted to watch two or more hot men hooking up with each other,

• 10:33Speaker 02

  we have existing avenues for that. We have means.

• 10:36Linda Holmes?

  Sure.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  I have not seen it myself, but I was very good at start. It's some of those means have even been put up on the information superhighway.

• 10:42Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Imagine that. What have God wrought? That doesn't explain what's happening here. Yes, the men are hot. Yes, the sex is explicit, but context matters. This is a mainstream product. It's not some of those, you know, alternate means I just mentioned. It means that gay men don't have to pretend it doesn't exist when we talk to our straight friends. We don't have to restrict the conversation to our private group chats. We can talk about this show with people outside our close friend circles. And that's what mainstream means. It means it's more socially acceptable. I guarantee you, Linda Holmes, there are going to be some very weird conversations over Christmas dinner with the family this year about this show. Boundaries will be crossed.

• 11:15Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And yet it is more explicit than we have come to expect from mainstream queer content.

• 11:20Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  That's, I think, the difference. I mean, there's also something different about the nature of the sex and how it's depicted. We'll get into that. But before we get to that, does that make sense to you?

• 11:27Linda Holmes?

  It absolutely makes sense to me. And interestingly, what it makes me think about is that I think there are people who come to this show who aren't really romance readers, right?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:35Linda Holmes?

  Which is what you said about yourself, who assume that this is way more sex than you get from quote unquote romance.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:43Linda Holmes?

  Right?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:45Linda Holmes?

  Like, the specifics of the sex in the show comes specifically from the sex in the book. And that is true of lots of romance. Like, I have said for many, many, many, many years, people who don't read romance, there are segments of the population that don't read romance, who have a profoundly misguided understanding of how horny it is.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:05Linda Holmes?

  Right? How explicitly sexual a lot of romance is. And that includes romance that you can, like, buy at the grocery store. And that's always been true. And there's all kinds of gendered stuff that goes into whether we quote unquote assume that visuals are more explicit than writing. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting stuff about that. But to me, what I felt like I was seeing was this is a TV version of what they would call... Are you familiar with the chili pepper scale, Glenn?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I think so.

• 12:36Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. The chili pepper scale is when people talk about romance novels in particular.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 12:41Linda Holmes?

  Maybe you know it differently.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was thinking swivel units. Nope, I'm not. Go ahead.

• 12:46Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Say more.

• 12:47Linda Holmes?

  In romance novels in particular, there is a rating of chili peppers where people will take a book and they rate it and it's separate from the idea of good and bad, right? They'll rate it on a basis of essentially one to four. Usually I have seen it as one to four. Sometimes it can be one to five chili peppers. And that means how much sex is in it explicitly on the page.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:12Linda Holmes?

  And the volume of sex in these books is quite high, which I want to come back to in a second. But this is a TV version of like a four chili pepper book.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 13:21Linda Holmes?

  And that is something that has not been done a lot.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:24Linda Holmes?

  In adaptations. You could argue about Bridgerton. I think there are some similarities and differences, but it's not that common to see a TV adaptation of a four chili pepper book done pretty faithfully.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 13:37Linda Holmes?

  To how it feels to read the book.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Okay. The thing that sets it apart for me is the nature of the sex. I mean,

• 13:45Linda Holmes?

  Exactly.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  When gay romance goes mainstream, and I'm sure it's also true with heterosexual romance, but I can speak specifically to when gay romance goes mainstream. Historically, it comes up against the fact, or at least I should say that maybe the widely perceived notion that gay sex gives straights the ick. And when I say straights, I mean, straight men, generally speaking, as masculinity is a prison. And because the world is run by straight men, what we've gotten used to seeing over the years is our two leads kiss, then we pan away to the gently wafting curtains or we fade to black and suddenly that's all we know about these two characters is that they had sex.

• 14:16Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  But what this show understands, and I think fellow travelers from 2023, the Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey show also understood, is that that isn't enough. That doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't describe. It doesn't characterize. It doesn't delineate. It doesn't show us anything about their relationship. If there's a power differential, if there's a specific dynamic, the unique energy that exists between them, we've talked about before on the show, the writer Alan Gergenius, who is a gay man who writes literary fiction. He has talked a lot about how in American fiction, I would extend that to television and movies, characterization tends to stop at the bedroom door.

• 14:50Linda Holmes?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  In literary fiction, anyway, authors, filmmakers are missing out on a huge opportunity to show us a pretty important part of their characters' lives, not just that they have sex, but how they have it. And

• 15:00Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I've read the voices online who maintain that sex scenes are unnecessary and get in the way. And I couldn't disagree more. And this is a hill I will die on.

• 15:07Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. You know, perhaps has to do with Jacob Tierney and the work that he's done developing the show, you know, the direction of the show, other things. But I think on this show, and it's true in the book, too, these guys have sex in ways that very clearly give you information about where they are in the relationship.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:26Linda Holmes?

  And so to make a sex scene that conveys something is A, difficult to do, and B, not something that always happens. And so sometimes you get a devaluing of sex scenes that is understandably based on the fact that a lot of them are kind of generic.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:46Linda Holmes?

  Right?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:47Linda Holmes?

  It's very much like, and I'm far from the first person to make this comparison, but it's sort of like an action scene. It's sort of like a battle scene or a fight scene. A fight scene can be really satisfying in that it tells you a lot about what's going on in the story. I mean, first of all, it can just be fun to watch.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:05Linda Holmes?

  Right? Ditto for a sex scene.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:07Linda Holmes?

  Right? Fun to watch. But sometimes you're getting, who is this person and where are they at this moment? And is this different from what you've seen before? And all of those things. I think this show is really good at showing you, first of all, in the run-up to the sex, like, how are they talking about it? How are they inviting it? How much are they sort of overtly talking about wanting to do it?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:32Linda Holmes?

  Versus pretending they don't want to do it until they get a lot closer. You see what I mean?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  I do, I do.

• 16:38Linda Holmes?

  I understand where this sense of like, I don't like sex scenes, they're unnatural. I understand where I think that can sometimes come from, which is having been subjected to a lot of artless sex scenes. But artful sex scenes, like the ones in this show and like the ones in good romance novels, are specific to these characters and this situation.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Sure. I think what I'm advocating for is not simply more sex scenes. I'm advocating for exactly what you're talking about, well-done sex scenes. And the reason we don't see them a lot is because they're tough to pull off. I mean, what happens when you can do it right is That you're not leaving nuance on the cutting room floor in the first draft. Stuff we want to know about these people. And it's a lot more nuanced, I should say. This goes to you're speaking about like how sometimes it can feel characterless. Like it's a lot more nuanced than even a lot of gay men will think. Because in gay circles, there is a very reductionist idea of roles and positions as destiny, as defining traits. You are one thing or you're the other and you are that for life. But that's BS and it always has been. There are femme tops, there are masked bottoms and everything in between. And the nature of sex, if you can convey it well, is that those roles and positions can shift.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  And it's in those shifts that character gets revealed. How they deal with things like intimacy and vulnerability, all the unspoken negotiations of sex. And the humor, sex can be very funny. Can they laugh at themselves? Can these characters laugh at themselves?

• 18:03Linda Holmes?

  There is a lot of that. I think this is a show that is particularly good at that, that sometimes it can be awkward. Sometimes it can be like, there's a little bit of like a you want me to do what?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 18:12Linda Holmes?

  Kind of humor to this show. And at the same time, I also really like the fact that it's also very sweet at certain moments. You know, there's a moment in the fourth episode where you get a kind of a, I don't even know how to describe it, a cuddle.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what happens after the sex in that episode? They sit on opposite ends of the couch for each other, watching TV.

• 18:32Linda Holmes?

  Yes. And again, can I just say, taken straight out of the book.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yep, that's important.

• 18:35Linda Holmes?

  Taken straight out of the book.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  It's the energy in the moment, it's who's taking charge in the moment. And that gives us a series of snapshots of the relationship. And then, you know, the first time we saw sex on this show, it showed them, as you mentioned, starting to have sex. Then we fade to black. And I guarantee you, I was not the only person that Yonan's going, well.

• 18:52Linda Holmes?

  Oh, sure.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  I guess that's what we get. At least they showed us the butts, they have good butts. Then we fade up and they're in a different position. And that happens again and again. And we're getting a fuller view, literally and figuratively, of these characters. We're getting queer sex depicted with directness and clarity, which means we can get, because they're doing it correctly. They're doing it well. We can get those rooms for complexity and layers without coyness or without apologizing or shame. The lack of shame, that intentionality coming from behind the camera. That's the game changer here, I think.

• 19:24Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  I also think, can we just say that the setting is intriguing? I'm the last person who ever thought I would say that. But look, if we're gonna queer a space, sports is a good one to queer. I mean.

• 19:34Linda Holmes?

  For sure.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  My parents were huge hockey fans. I got dragged, Linda, to so many Flyers games. And I would sit there stewing, just watching. What struck me as a pretty performative.

• 19:45Linda Holmes?

  They're very sweaty under there, though.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but everything told me this was not a world for me. I can't picture myself in this world.

• 19:50Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  This show allows me to imagine what would happen if I found myself in that world. No, I don't have the skills. I don't have the butt. But I do have the desires. How would those desires work in this space?

• 20:00Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's plausible for me to be there. I mean, it's working for me like a fantasy novel. Like, I'm Lucy, and I'm walking through the wardrobe into Narnia. And Mr. Tumnus comes skating out of the darkness and slams me into the boards. But that's what I'm thinking. That's how I'm feeling about this. It's like, it's not me, but it's people like me. How could they navigate this? And how plausible does it seem to me? I don't know. But I'm not Karen right now. I don't care.

• 20:24Linda Holmes?

  And I will say, you know, for people who are interested in this show, you know, maybe try the book. I will say, there's also, these books, in a lot of ways, are a uniting of several different things that have been extremely popular, some for a shorter period of time, some for a longer period of time, right? I think there's been a really welcome boom in queer romance in the last, I never want to say exactly how many years because I lose track, but sort of in contemporary romance compared to when I was, you know, maybe in my twenties, right? Also, hockey? This is not the only hockey thing. There's so much hockey romance out there. I don't know exactly what the definitive beginning of it was, but hockey romance is such a thing.

• 21:08Linda Holmes?

  And if you think like, I would read more hockey romance, let me tell you, there's more hockey romance out there for you, some of which falls into the third category I would talk about, which is interconnected romance novels that involve groups of people, right? Here it's the hockey league, right? All of the Rachel Reid books are interconnected. The couple that they went and showed you in the third episode, Kip and Scott are the couple that was in the first book.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:36Linda Holmes?

  Very common structure. I read a whole series that was a football league. I read a bunch of a series that was race car drivers. So this story is kind of like, again, it feels fresh, but a lot of really classic and really popular elements. And that's not to mention the ongoing popularity of the Four Chili Pepper book. I think this is a show that we both like.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  We do.

• 22:00Linda Holmes?

  And perhaps according to our different ways of arriving at it, both really enjoy this. But there are going to be ultimately six episodes. The first four are out as we record this. We want to know what you think about heated rivalry. I know what a lot of you think about heated rivalry, but I want to know what you think about heated rivalry. Find us at facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Glen Weldon, thank you so much for being here, buddy. This was really fun.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Hockey reference goes here. Thanks, Linda.

• 22:27Linda Holmes?

  This episode is produced by Carly Rubin, Kayla Lattimore, Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.

• 22:45Speaker 00

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