On Thursday evening, Canada’s national capital, gray, freezing and, yes, a little boring, became the epicenter of this moment’s most powerful pop culture earthquake: “Heated Rivalry.”
These are not words anyone who’s ever been to Ottawa would expect to write, or read.
But as Hudson Williams, the Canadian actor and overnight star who plays hockey marvel Shane Hollander on the show, smiled and embraced Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, their meet-cute at Prime Time, the Canadian Media Producers Association screen-industry conference, felt like a homecoming.
“Surreal,” Mr. Williams muttered.
Mr. Carney put an arm around him and later, playfully, a full-body hug.
The home crowd went wild. After all, Ottawa is Hollander’s birthplace (although Mr. Williams himself is from British Columbia).
Since “Heated Rivalry” debuted on Crave, a Canadian streaming service, (and on HBO Max elsewhere) the entertainment industry has been trying to decode its dizzying success.
The modest-budget Canadian show chronicles the clandestine love affair over nine years between two male hockey players — Canada’s Hollander, and Ilya Rozanov from Russia (played by Texas native Connor Storrie) — packed with yearning and steamy rendezvous. It’s based on the “Game Changers” series of books by Rachel Reid, a Nova Scotian author.
As for what’s made it such a meteoric global hit: Is it the young, beautiful actors? The lust-turned-to-love story? The sex? The hopeful ending?
I mean, yes, I think so, probably.
But there’s also something fundamentally Canadian hard-wired into the series that underscores its authenticity and lack of frills.
The show was made in Canada, and most of the cast and crew are Canadian. It’s chock-full of Canadiana: The lakeside cottage where the season’s final episode takes place is an icon of Canadian summers, the show’s creator Jacob Tierney told me on the Prime Time red carpet on Thursday when I asked him what the most Canadian thing about the show was.
Then he corrected himself: “And the loon! It’s on our money!” he said, referring to the emblematic “stupid Canadian wolf bird” that makes a loud and endearing appearance in the finale.
“Heated Rivalry” was subsidized in part by Canadian tax revenue through a government policy that seeks to preserve the country’s distinct cultural creations and protect them from getting swallowed up by the bigger, richer U.S. entertainment industry.
The theme of getting swallowed up by the United States was inescapable on Thursday.
Mr. Carney was fresh from a high-profile speech at the annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, where he angered President Trump by starkly describing a rupture in the U.S.-led world order and calling for middle powers like Canada to band together. In Ottawa on Thursday, Mr. Carney drew as many cheers as Mr. Williams, a testament to his own political star having a moment.
“The world knows that Shane and Ilya are rising hockey stars who fall for each other as they face off in one of the greatest rivalries the game has ever known,” Mr. Carney said in his keynote speech at the entertainment-industry event.
“But they’re also two young men who are terrified of being their fullest selves, and we live in an increasingly dangerous, divided and intolerant world,” he added. The audience went completely silent.
“A fundamental Canadian value is that people should be able to be whoever they want to be, to love whoever they want to love,” Mr. Carney said to roaring applause.
Canada is home to one of the world’s top three media production industries, alongside the United States and Britain. Filming, animation and location services in Canada are worth nearly 10 billion Canadian dollars (more than $7 billion), according to the Canadian Media Production Association, an industry group, and employs about 180,000 people.
The series has brought attention to the production capabilities in Canada, including in areas that don’t normally get huge amounts of attention, or revenue.
Province of Canada, an apparel firm that makes high-end cotton goods domestically, will reproduce and sell the show’s fictional Canada Olympic Team fleece jacket, which was designed by Canadian costume designer Hanna Puley.
Bell Media is the Canadian company that took a chance on producing the show. To Sean Cohan, its president (and a native New Yorker), the show’s popularity is a sign to go bigger on Canadian productions, especially as the country realizes a newfound assertiveness.
“It’s this special moment where a very special place is kind of, you know, it’s kind of putting its elbows up and saying, you know, not so fast,” he said in an interview, referencing a popular slogan borrowed from hockey and employed by Mr. Carney to signify resistance to Mr. Trump’s menacing messages to Canada.
And then there’s hockey.
“What could be more Canadian? It’s the vessel for Canada’s dreams. It’s where we so often feed our national myths, especially what I think of as Canadians’ most treasured value: grit,” said Cameron Bailey, the chief executive officer of another Canadian cultural institution, the Toronto International Film Festival.
He added: “What “Heated Rivalry” proves is what so many of us in Canada’s screen sector already know: We punch way above our middle-power weight.”
Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country.
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