‘Heated Rivalry’ scoring big audiences on HBO Max

The story traces Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov as they sustain a decade-long secret relationship, mixing slow-building yearning with explicit sexual scenes. Jacob Tierney, who developed, wrote and directed the series, said he was drawn to the project for its “pure queer joy.”

Audiences have met that joy with a passionate response, propelling “Heated Rivalry” to the No. 1 series on HBO Max. Along the way, it’s generated new interest in the “Game Changers” book series that it’s based on and drawn attention to sports romance fiction, especially stories with queer storylines.

Originally developed for the Canadian streaming service Crave, the show scored a distribution deal with HBO and has already been renewed for a second season.

“Unashamedly, when pitching, it was just like, this is a Harlequin romance. This has a happy ending,” Tierney said. “This is about two boys in love and a lot of sex.”

Hockey romance books have grown in popularity within the broader sports romance genre, fueled by readers drawn to the intensity of sport as much as the relationships at its center. Mackenzie Walton, who edited the “Heated Rivalry” novel, said the genre’s staying power comes from how deeply the stories immerse readers in the sport itself.

“It’s much more common when I read a hockey romance that I get the sense that hockey is important at the heart of the book, and I think readers really respond to that sense of authenticity,” Walton said.

According to the book’s publisher Harlequin, Reid’s six-novel “Game Changers” series has sold 650,000 copies since the first was published in 2018.

“Anytime Hollywood pays attention to, and respects, romance fans, they notice and show their appreciation,” Leah Koch, co-owner of the romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice, wrote in an email. She added that producing a high-quality adaptation of a story queer readers might not have expected to reach television signals a growing recognition of both their cultural interests and their economic impact.

Content creator Josh Banfield has been making Instagram videos about the show since its November premiere. He believes part of the show’s popularity with queer fans is the slow-burning aspect of Shane and Ilya’s romance.

“There’s something nice about seeing the yearning and seeing that they do maintain contact with each other and still have this connection,” Banfield said.

Fans and the creators behind the book and TV show also credit the lead actors, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, for the show’s success. Tierney said he knew they were his Ilya and Shane almost instantly.

“The show was going to live and die based on this casting,” Tierney said. “I think once they did their chemistry read together, everybody was like, ‘OK, fine, done.'”

Rachel Reid, author of the books, said she was happy with the adaptation and with who was chosen to play the characters she wrote.

“If I built the perfect actors in a lab, I could not have built better people to play these characters,” Reid said.

It was also important to both Tierney and Reid to have Shane played by someone of Asian descent, as the character is in the books, to keep a sense of diversity in a genre that tends to have mostly white characters.

Hockey romances still tend to be dominantly white and heterosexual. According to Koch, readers who come to the Ripped Bodice’s locations are looking for more people like Shane — queer and diverse — to be in their stories.

Customers frequently seek out queer sports romances and those that “go beyond the typical alpha-jock trope,” she wrote. But she’s skeptical that the success of “Heated Rivalry” will lead to more mainstream books or shows with queer stories.

“A breakthrough title does sometimes allow other authors more access, but not always,” Koch wrote. “But hey, maybe they’ll prove me wrong, and wouldn’t that be nice?”

Romance blogger Laura Dusi-Showers said women in particular are responding to the male-on-male romance in a hockey book because of the fantasy aspect of seeing something different than their everyday lives. As for why it works, she said it was due to hockey being a “manly, aggressive sport” with no out NHL players. “I think it’s opening people’s eyes to what could be,” Dusi-Showers said.

This was the reason Reid wrote her books in the first place: wanting to tell a different story.

“The series just came from a love of hockey, but also my own conflicted feelings about all the bad things about the culture around the sport, especially the homophobia,” Reid said.

Reid’s debut book in her hockey series, “Game Changer,” is about Scott Hunter, the fictional first fictional hockey player to come out publicly, and his juice-bar barista boyfriend Kip Grady. Part of this story was told in “Heated Rivalry’s” third episode and featured as a climactic moment in the fifth episode.

As to why fans are responding so strongly to the show and the actors, Reid singled out the acting.

“They’re getting really, really emotional or excited about one little quiet part or one line delivery, and that has nothing to do with the sex on the show,” she said, pointing specifically to Williams’ performance as the more awkward and less self-assured Shane. “Maybe a choice that Hudson made as an actor is making everybody lose their minds, and I love to see that.”