On “Heated Rivalry,” the smut is the point

Sometimes the thin line between love and hate, including the brand of disdain that’s just for show, can be bridged by a tuna melt. Since it’s “Heated Rivalry” serving this dish, the viewer understands that the sandwich in this scenario isn’t just a sandwich, especially since stoic hockey sensation Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) makes it for his clean-cut adversary Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams).

From their first meeting, the air between them crackles with . . . something. Tension? Anticipation? Ilya, the pride of Russia, sizes up Shane as an opponent, someone to dominate. Shane, a Canadian, does the same but with a smile and a gesture of professional admiration. On the ice, their supposed animosity registers with such intensity that nobody would suspect Ilya and Shane have been smashing in secret for eight years.

But the hookup at the center of the show’s fourth episode, “Rose,” feels different. Until then, the pair have stolen a few hungry hours in hotel rooms between games. For this interlude, Ilya commandeers an architecturally impressive pad as their sex den. They still don’t talk until Ilya offers to make a tuna melt for Shane, and only as a casual post-coital favor: “I was going to make one for me, I can make two,” he says with a shrug.

Subtly, though, this introduces a new move to their repertoire: honest intimacy. For all the aggressive, acrobatic sex they share, despite the filthy sexting and dirty talk, they reveal little about their lives off the ice, certainly nothing about their fears and vulnerability. They don’t even refer to each other by their first names.

Not long after finishing their meal, when Shane proves he understands enough Russian to comprehend that a stressful phone call Ilya conducts in his native tongue has to do with his father, Ilya appreciatively responds by holding his lover. One more brief, explosive interlude later, Ilya blurts out Shane’s name, and for the first time in all the years they’ve circled each other. And Shane’s discomfort at hearing Ilya say it shows how challenging that level of emotional nudity is for these two to skate around.

“Heated Rivalry,” created for Canadian streaming service Crave, simultaneously streams stateside on HBO Max, which premiered it in November with little promotion. In defense of those surprised by the show’s popularity, it’s not as if it looks like an easy sell. Where other seasonal romances whisk us snow-blanketed Christmas towns or gentle period settings, this is a front-row, highly sexualized spectacle set in the realm of professional hockey, starring a pair of unknown actors.

Pro sports aren’t known as bastions of acceptance for queer players, particularly hockey, one of the most aggro sports conceivable. There are no queer players who are out in the National Hockey League, the real-world equivalent of the show’s Major League Hockey.

But in adapting Rachel Reid’s “Game Changers” novels, series creator Jacob Tierney proves he knows people aren’t looking for an accurate portrayal of gameplay. Hockey barely factors into its episodes.

“Heated Rivalry” is doing something with its in-your-face eroticism that few if any other dramas bother to attempt: It shows carnal craving as a means of circumventing emotional and cultural barriers. None of this is obvious in the first two episodes of the show’s six-part season, which is light on establishing dialogue, the standard means of teasing out character interiority. It takes a few more episodes to realize that it doesn’t need to be. The sex is designed to do all the talking, enough to merit frequent usages of the terms “smutty” and “slutty” in other enthusiastic coverage describing what the show has going for it.

Intentionally explicit without full frontal displays, “Heated Rivalry’s” encounters are an interplay of meticulous choreography and camera framing that show just enough of the actor’s nudity without qualifying as full-bore pornography. Would that be a turn-off? Probably not, but the attentive construction that goes into every entanglement propels the plot instead of relegating it to something horndogs fast-forward past to get to the next bang session.

While the holiday season has long been associated with great love stories, most are frothy, low-stakes rom-coms festooned with chaste kisses and love scenes that, at their spiciest, may rise to the level of a PG-13 rating. “Bridgerton” is an exception, but even those sensual tales clothe their romantic yearnings in layers of heavy fabrics and tight corseting and hours of “will they, won’t they” dialogue. The sex is the culmination, the release after hours of stoking desire with furtive gazes and innuendo.

In contrast, sexual frankness is Ilya and Shane’s lingua franca, with the first steamy scene kicking off about 14 minutes into the premiere, courtesy of a dirty shower flirtation that leads to their inaugural tryst.

But even this isn’t what we typically see in movies that equate dramatic ardor with furious dry humping and clumsily snaking tongues. It takes a luscious while to get these two into bed, marked by stops and starts, and slow, deep kissing, stripping, and Shane’s first efforts at another kind of oral seduction. That this gay romance’s most enthusiastic evangelists are women, then, shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody.

Women have long been shortchanged in depictions of sensuality. Hence, the loud celebrations of Claire and Jamie Fraser’s considerate lovemaking on “Outlander” — or, closer to the topic at hand, the enthusiastic reception for the third episode of “Heated Rivalry,” “Hunter.”  It tells the story of veteran MLH player Scott Hunter (François Arnaud), someone Shane gets to know during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Since Scott spent years in the closet before a chiseled smoothie barista named Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.) knocks him off his skates, their story receives a more conventional romance architecture, moving quickly from a familiar meet-cute to moving in together. Yet Kip feels trapped by Scott’s insistence that they keep their romance a secret — a tale as old as the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

(Sabrina Lantos/Crave/HBO Max) François Arnaud as Scott Hunter and Robbie G.K. as Kip Grady in “Heated Rivalry”

However, this show’s main forerunner is the Boys Love genre that’s been a staple in Asian romance literature and TV for many years, based on a type of manga predominantly authored by women dating back to the 1970s. The U.S. audience has long enjoyed its own version via slashfic and online fandoms devoted to shipping same sex romances between characters on their favorite shows.

Either way, Ilya and Shane’s chemistry follows the classic “enemies to lovers” formula that’s especially relished by BL fans. Placing two men in opposition removes any perceived power imbalance or physical threat that might otherwise be present if the roles were played by a man and woman, even an antagonistic pair who can’t fight their attraction to each other.

Any peril Ilya and Shane face would not come from each other or the people who love them, including Ilya’s best friend, Svetlana (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova), and Rose (Sophie Nélisse), an actor Shane dates until she figures out he’s just not that into her, or women in general. Mainly, Shane fears disappointing his highly involved mother, Yuna (Christina Chang), and David (Dylan Walsh), his father. Ilya’s family back in Russia is more abusive and predatory, to say nothing of the danger he’d face from the Russian government if he were to come out.

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Thus, the sex on “Heated Rivalry” is more confrontational than any of Claire and Jamie Fraser’s candlelit interludes on “Outlander” and burns many times hotter; it’s as lascivious as you’ve heard and yet, affirming.

Still, anyone who watches both series — or, really, any decent adaptations of a romance title — can discern and appreciate the different narrative purpose served by the show’s torrid congress.

Once the plot picks up speed with intercuts between game snippets, Ilya and Shane training for their next match, and scenes of panting, penetrative sex, the slower, more tender moments take on more significance, such as Ilya dropping his porn talk facade to make a nourishing meal for Shane. It’s at that point, which happens midway through that fourth episode, that the avalanche of sex is then exposed as real foreplay.

(Sabrina Lantos/Crave/HBO Max) Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov in “Heated Rivalry”

Now we can’t ignore that, after so much time spent in each other’s arms and beds, Ilya and Shane know next to nothing about the other person’s individual battles. That soon changes. Hands down the most moving scene in the whole show, and a top-notch work of TV storytelling, occurs in the fifth episode, when Shane gives a grieving Ilya, unable to find the right English words to express his sadness, the opportunity to unburden himself in his language.

Shane doesn’t comprehend exactly what he’s saying, but he listens, eyes closed. At long last, nothing’s left unsaid between the two, and it’s understood that juxtaposing the sex against these lonely interactions lends true urgency and strength to their romance.

All this is more than enough to explain why so many are lovestruck with Ilya and Shane, hanging on every ecstatic groan and voracious kiss — in secret, at first, before stepping into the sunlight with the people they love and trust the most. Most TV attempts at sex and sensuality are meager offerings. “Heated Rivalry” fulfills by serving its romance hot and molten, and with heartfelt meaning.

All episodes of “Heated Rivalry” are streaming on HBO Max.