Imprisoned Canadian and Russian hockey players get to work behind closed doors, in a story that feels familiar and skates on thin ice.
If you like your gay sex scenes scorching, steamy and erotic, then Heated rivalry your name is everywhere.
Because the rest of the story is nothing we haven’t seen before, except it’s set in the world of ice hockey.
Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) is a star player for the Canadian Major League Hockey team and has a grudging admiration for Russian star player Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie).
The pair first met in 2008, when the two were touted as rising stars, before Rozanov was called up to a team in Boston. On the ice, they look at each other as they cross hockey sticks, and there’s a lot of watching in the gym and in the showers before one makes a move on the other.
18 minutes into the first episode, they’re both naked in a hotel room in the first of candid, erotic sex that would have the intimacy coordinator working overtime or simply being banished to the green room. I’m not sure.
But of course there are problems, given the plans to expand the story to six episodes.
One has never had a hot man in male action, while the other acts out of curiosity. What, is it too much to be openly gay and feel comfortable allowing casual sex? They both seemed pretty comfortable to me, so it’s annoying that their secret has to remain just that in the testosterone world of hockey (see also: AFL).
Hollander has also secured a series of lucrative sponsorship deals from mom (Christina Chang), who is driven by his Asian-Canadian representation (just not his LGBT visibility), while dad — Dylan Walsh in a supporting role — has yet to contribute much to the two episodes released.
Meanwhile, hot but emotionless Russian (cliché) Rozanov is under pressure from his demanding father and bullying brother to prove his worth and send some money home.
They also keep their romance under wraps by messaging or sexting under the pseudonyms ‘Jane’ and ‘Lily’ in case anyone sees their phone. Kill me now.
Confusingly, the story makes repetitive time jumps of two months/six months/years across forgettable Montreal/Ontario/Boston/Las Vegas locations…seriously, who cares? This feels like it’s being unnecessarily faithful to a novel when screen stories allow dramatic license for good reasons.
There are also some questions about whether the budget meets the ambitions of the story. Press conferences and ice hockey arenas are often filmed tightly to limit the costs of the scenes.
That said, the two leads have good chemistry, with Hudson Williams being a standout as he never overstates the seriousness of the situation. Physically, he, and especially Connor Storrie, are ripped and have high eye-candy factor. Masturbating in the shower, oral and anal sex leave little to the imagination. There is nudity tactfully included, but not completely frontal as you would expect from a premium drama.
But the story is quite well known, courted by films like Handsome devil, summer storm, the pass, from the sidenow when it’s applied to the world of ice hockey, and after six episodes I’m wondering why it wasn’t just a telemovie.
Sure, the male-on-male action is hot, but there are, ahem, other mediums that offer room for that.
For premium drama, the story must also sparkle.
Heated Rivalry is now available on HBO Max.
#Heated #rivalry #Television #tonight