""Heated Rivalry," a low-budget Canadian series that began streaming on HBO Max late last year, quickly made the leap from unexpected word-of-mouth success to full-blown cultural phenomenon. The show, which follows a pair of professional hockey players who fall for each other, has been name-checked by everyone from the N.H.L. commissioner to Zohran Mamdani; its two young leads, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, just served as Olympic torch-bearers."
"On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz unpack "Heated Rivalry"'s appeal, considering its embrace of earnestness and its place in a broader lineage of stories about gay love. The way the protagonists are forced to hide their relationship recalls dramas set in earlier eras, from E. M. Forster's "Maurice" to Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain"-but the function of the closet in art is ever-evolving."
Heated Rivalry is a low-budget Canadian series that began streaming on HBO Max and rapidly moved from word-of-mouth success to cultural phenomenon. The series follows two professional hockey players who fall in love and has received attention from figures including the N.H.L. commissioner and Zohran Mamdani; its young leads served as Olympic torch-bearers. The show embraces earnestness and connects to a lineage of gay love stories, recalling earlier dramas in which protagonists hide relationships while also illustrating how the function of the closet in art continues to evolve. The film Pillion depicts supportive parents who remain unaware of their son’s secret life, suggesting contemporary "closets within closets" where public acceptance coexists with private concealment.
Read at The New Yorker
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