Check out the list of the most popular shows on HBO Max right now, and you will see some expected titles. There is “It: Welcome to Derry,” inspired by a Stephen King novel, and “Mad Men,” the acclaimed period drama that landed on the platform earlier this month.
But hovering near the top is a new series that until about a month ago almost nobody in the United States had heard of: “Heated Rivalry,” a drama about the hot-and-heavy romance between two closeted male professional hockey players, made for the Canadian streaming service Crave.
Buzz has been mounting since at least September, when images of its leading beefcakes — Connor Storrie, 25, and Hudson Williams, 24 — flooded social media. Romance readers were on it, too: The series is mostly adapted from the novel of the same name in “Game Changers,” the author Rachel Reid’s wildly popular male-male hockey-themed romance series.
The frenzy kicked into overdrive on Black Friday, when the first two episodes premiered. It has since been at or near the top of the most-watched series list on HBO Max, which has already renewed it for another season. Bars that have been packed for hosting parties are on tap for a very busy Friday, when the first season finale premieres.
The attention showered on “Heated Rivalry” has been “quite extraordinary,” said Williams, who joined Storrie and the show’s creator, Jacob Tierney, in a recent video interview.
“The pitch was a small Canadian show, emphasis on small and Canadian,” said Williams, who grew up in British Columbia. “I never really imagined this.”
A big reason the show caught fire is the abundance of furtive and enthusiastic hookups between its leading characters: the cocky, Russian-born Ilya (Storrie) and the collected Canadian Shane (Williams). The scenes might be considered too hot for streaming TV, were it not for the carefully positioned thighs.
Just as steamy for many fans is the men’s passion outside the bedroom, expressed through fervid sexts and lingering stares.
“The slow burn is that they have feelings for each other, not that they are attracted to each other,” said Tierney, who wrote and directed the series.
When the actors were asked if they identified under the L.G.B.T.Q. umbrella, Tierney answered first.
“I don’t think we need to get into anything about the actors and their personal lives,” he said. “It’s so much more important to have what is clearly a fantasy play out in the terms of the characters and their stakes in the show.”
Williams jumped in. “Connor and I want to keep our private lives private, with all due respect,” he said. “But if it’s not clear, we have the most love and care for the L.G.B.T. community.”
Storrie said he and Williams had an immediate rapport but called on a cadre of coaches to help them ease into the physical demands of their roles. The hockey player Cam Fergus helped with athletics; the intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter got them acclimated to each others’ bodies.
Storrie also needed a dialect coach (Kate Yablunovsky, who also translated dialogue into Russian), which may come as a surprise: He is from Odessa but the one in West Texas, not Ukraine. Storrie said he had loved playing with accents since he was a child, when he used Google Translate to write and rehearse monologues in a variety of languages.
“I was always obsessed with Eastern European stoicism and how the accent affects behavior,” he said. “I pocketed those traits.”
“Heated Rivalry” is a life-changing break for the actors. Williams, the son of a Korean mother and British-Dutch father, had supporting film and television roles under his belt. Storrie, a performing arts school kid, was best known for a pivotal role in “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
The incognito days are over. Earlier this month, Storrie and Williams walked the red carpet at an event for the Actor Awards, formerly the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
This level of fame is also new for Tierney, who is best known as a developer of the beloved Canadian sitcom “Letterkenny” — he also wrote, directed and played a barely closeted pastor — and its hockey-themed spinoff, “Shoresy.” Tierney, who is gay, said he was introduced to “Heated Rivalry” during the pandemic, when he listened to the audio version of the novel. In adapting it, he looked to “Letterkenny,” a rural absurdist comedy that was a hit for Crave and Hulu, for a lesson.
“The more personal you make something, the more intimate you make it, the more chance you have of reaching a larger amount of people,” he said.
It worked. Casey Bloys, the chief executive and chairman of HBO and HBO Max Content, said acquiring the show was “an easy yes” that had “far exceeded our expectations.” He said early data showed the viewership was split between men, likely gay, and women, a majority of the romance readership.
“We’ve done a lot of shows with racy sex scenes, so I thought it would make some noise,” he said.
The author Reid, who is based in Halifax, said her life has been “nuts” since the “Heated Rivalry” trailer premiered in October. It is a turn of events she never would have predicted when “Game Changer,” the first novel in the series, debuted as an e-book in 2018. Harlequin has since released the entire “Game Changer” series in paperback editions, and “Heated Rivalry” is on best-seller lists. What’s the draw?
“The rivalry element helps,” said Reid, who is married to a man but said she keeps her sexual orientation private. “That forbidden romance thing is always appealing, the opposites attract thing.”
“I like to think they’re interesting characters,” she added. “Enough that people really want to read more and more.”
The show isn’t for all gay tastes. The “I Love L.A.” actor Jordan Firstman said in a recent interview with Vulture that he found the show’s sex scenes inauthentic. He also took the actors to task for not coming out, if they are gay.
“I don’t respect you, because you care too much about your career and what’s going to happen if people think you’re gay,” he said. The feud seems to have cooled: Last week Williams posted a selfie with Firstman on Instagram, adding a heart emoji.
Joey Marcacci isn’t worried about all that. A board member of the New York City Pride Hockey Alliance, an organization for queer ice hockey players and fans, he said the show tapped into what many hockey fans struggle with: How to love and play a sport that comes with a culture that is a “very toxic environment for any queer person.”
To date, the N.H.L. doesn’t have an active player out and never has.
That a hot romance can blossom under those circumstances, even a closeted and fictional one, Marcacci added, “is exactly what I want to see.”
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