Heated Rivalry is an M/M hockey romance TV series based on the book of the same name. It’s some sort of popular sensation, supposedly the #3 most popular TV show online. At time of writing, four out of six episodes have been released, and we’ve been keeping up with it. We’re used to accepting a lower quality standard when it comes to gay film. But this is surprisingly high quality, having good writing, good production, and amazing acting.

It’s about two hockey players on rival teams, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov who are having sex with each other. But their relationship has to be kept secret because it would be bad for their careers. Fair warning, these are explicit sex scenes, and there are a lot of them, to the point of being pornographic.

The central conflict is basically that Shane and Ilya are poor communicators. Even after hooking up for years and years they still haven’t haven’t progressed to level of having frank conversations. They’re refusing to acknowledge to each other or even themselves that it’s more than a fling. They each have their personal struggles (e.g. Rozanov is constantly dealing with his father in Russia, who appears to have Alzheimer’s), but they remain separate, undisclosed. Their inability to communicate is exacerbated by external pressures to keep the relationship secret, and uphold masculinity.

This is of course the kind of M/M that’s targeted at female audiences rather than gay male audiences. A common question is whether gay men feel like they’re being fetishized. And the answer is no, it’s fine. Certainly there’s a history of female authors writing about gay and bi men without much of an understanding of the subject, but these days there’s a lot more awareness and conscientiousness. In the end, if it’s good, then it’s good.

Obviously I don’t have any special insight into why women like it; I could only say what’s already been said. But personally, one of the reasons I like M/M romance (apart from the obvious) is the choice of central conflict.

Often with straight romance stories, the central conflict casts doubt on the relationship. And perhaps because I have high standards for relationships, my own instinct is that they should break up. I want to see these characters achieve self-actualization by leaving the relationship behind. But the romance genre is too cowardly to go in that direction. The advantage of M/M romance is that it often presents conflict coming from external sources. For example, the characters are professional athletes who can’t come out. On the other hand, if the conflict is purely external, the relationship itself can come across as idealized, too perfect.

But that’s not the case in Heated Rivalry. A lot of their problems come from masculinity, and the characters’ refusal to show vulnerability. It’s an external conflict, but it’s also internal. Masculinity is not just something imposed by society, it’s something we take into ourselves. So the story is basically, masculinity bad, and that’s great.

As it happens, my husband also read the novel. He wasn’t a fan, says there was too much hockey and sex. But he tends to like these sports romances more than the fantasy romances. He says, fantasy romances often depict abusive relationships (as enabled by magical coercion), whereas sports romances merely depict dysfunctional ones. But neither of us are interested in sports. We often joke, what if they replaced hockey with a more appealing activity, like if they were rival players in Magic: The Gathering.

Of course, if you like hockey, then more power to you. It’s uplifting to see hockey fans respond positively to the show. There are lots of anecdotes of basically an M/M-romance-to-hockey pipeline. It probably also has positive impact on real athletes too.

There isn’t actually much hockey in the show, I think because filming hockey is expensive. My husband says there’s a lot more in the book. It’s basically about two people who can’t communicate through words, but communicate much better through the language of hockey. That doesn’t really come across in the show.