Intense rivalry: The hot gay ice hockey drama has got everyone talking – but is it any good? | drama

eEven before it dropped on HBO Max last month, this new drama about two rival gay ice hockey players who knock each other off the rink while fighting for athletic supremacy over it was generating its own steam. This may have been creator Jacob Tierney’s succinct response to questions about the sexuality of his leading actors during a recent promotional tour. Or that the show is based on a series of erotic novels by Canadian author Rachel Reid about hockey central (!) that keeps up with the current trend of “love-hate” romances that drive kids crazy. In fact, it’s probably just hot gay sex.

Because the hot competition becomes intense. One minute, Russian player Ilya Rozanov (Connor Story) is looking away at meek local hero Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), and the next they’re having fun together in the bathroom. Then get blowjobs in elegant hotel suites. Pretty soon, the boys will be going hammer and tongs – punctuated at regular intervals by ellipticals spanning months, waiting for the hockey rink to return them to each other’s arms. This is also appropriate for the sexual tension, which otherwise would have to be developed through character and dialogue.

Lots of heat. If only they had somewhere they could cool off.

In fact, for a show ostensibly about ice hockey — a sport that lends itself to exciting storytelling, as Inside Out 2 beautifully demonstrated — it’s strange that so little of it is on display here. Tierney seems more interested in the ambivalent eroticism of lowbrow sexuality than in any exploration of masculinity or homoeroticism in sport. The men don’t even use their uniforms when having sex, which I find highly intolerable.

The sex scenes aren’t quite as explicit as pearl-clutching critics might think, though they do seem to provide a valuable cardio workout to get the boys more worked up (they make the sweaty scenes of Challengers look like dry humping). The problem is that the actors’ ridiculously chiseled bodies resemble department store mannequins doused in vats of lube, and the set’s strict sex coordinators seem to have sucked all the spontaneity out of the action, so the effect has the same weird waxiness you get in a Bret Easton Ellis novel without the attendant satirical brutality. It brings to mind the fucking dolls in Team America: World Police.

When they’re not meaninglessly teasing each other, Rozanov and Hollander make dreary, monosyllabic company—and their stormy sex life hardly constitutes a “love-hate” romance, since they’re both in the sack for the first ten minutes and actively rooting for each other.

Perhaps in recognition of this lack of dramatic material, the third episode completely ignores the central couple to focus on his teammate, close gay teammate Scott Hunter (François Arnault) and his dalliance with local barista Kip (Robbie JK). Yes, every professional ice hockey player in the world is secretly and torturously gay (but also totally willing to be).

If only this love affair were more interesting than the last, or at least had some substantive consequences. Unfortunately, Scott and Kip are saddled (skipped?) with a boring, emotionally distant story and very cliche dialogue (“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time”), and the entire episode starts to feel like an unfortunate, skippable detour.

Performances are generally wooden, which may suit the silent nature of professional athletes but affects the pace and mood of the performance. The main exception is Storrie as the mercurial Russian – who steals the third episode with 20 seconds of screen time – full of charisma, masculinity and strength, but also something sad and wounded. He’s very good with the material, and could use a stronger sparring partner, which is easy to confuse with his hockey stick.

We’re only halfway through, but I already have an overwhelming feeling of intense competition. It comes from a wave of gay-themed romantic comedy material — from Heartstopper to Red, White and Royal Blue — that seems content to exploit gay culture without understanding it in a meaningful way. There is a strange kind of fetishism in these works that fascinates gay men enough to make them palatable, like pets for young women (and it is largely young women who read these books and drive sales).

The heated rivalry may have more raunchy sex than its rivals — no hard feat in Heartstopper’s case, where no one has even heard of fellatio — but it traffics in the same cheap platitudes and stereotypes about gay men as they do. It probably matters less that Tierney’s actors are straight than it does in the source material. The show may help you get off your rocks, but will he respect you in the morning?

• Heated Rivalry is streaming weekly on HBO Max in Australia and the US now, with a UK release date yet to be announced.