It was so much easier when all anyone was talking about were the buns. Heated Rivalry, a sudsy gay phenomenon that’s finally arriving on UK shores this week on Sky, is officially a TV show about star-crossed hockey player lovers who yearn and pout their way through an illicit affair. But it’s primarily about buns – jarringly bountiful sportsman buns, displayed in homoerotic-turned-plainly-homosexual shower scenes, or under saucy hotel room mood lighting.
There was a point, in the crisp weeks before Christmas, where Heated Rivalry’s inherent silliness reigned supreme in the discourse that surrounded it. It felt appropriate: there is an undeniable novelty to an expensive and well-made series fuelled by endless rounds of gay sex and softcore nudity, and also one that is so deeply unserious. Heated Rivalry is adapted from a series of smutty romance novels by author Rachel Reid, and hurtles between one melodramatic set piece to the next, bearing all the hallmarks of sloppy, salacious, fanfic-y work forged in the fires of Twilight, Tumblr and that conspiracy about Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson having a secret baby together.
