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- RAJA SEN

The protagonists in 'Heated Rivalry' are sculpted for each other.

Some people fit. Literally.

There is a lot to be said for romance and longing and poetic sighs, but there are times when bodies know better than hearts and minds. Some are meant to go together, clicking into place like long lost pieces of a jigsaw, completing each other carnally and instantly and completely. The television sensation Heated Rivalry—streaming in India on Lionsgate Play, available through Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video—features two protagonists who, while facing off on different teams in the unsubtle sport of ice hockey, are indeed sculpted for each other.

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are star players, the kind of rookies who get noticed at the same time and are fated to spend their life competing for alternating trophies, dueling to the death over tournaments and brand endorsements. Hollander, calm and efficient and square, has some Federer in him while Rozanov, naturally charismatic and erratic, has a Nadal flavour. It's a fascinating question: what if two elite athletes who gave it their all on the field were playing hard off it as well?

That may sound like fanfiction, but it isn't far-fetched. Those who are muscular, for instance, get off on muscles, and here we have two supremely fit men drawn, inexorably, to each other's... talents. Few men have openly come out as gay in high-intensity professional sport, but the prospect of a locker-room romance is all too evident because of setting and circumstance and testosterone. That what-if hypothetical powers the initial appeal of Heated Rivalry, by Letterkenny creator Jacob Tierney and based on the best selling Game Changers series of books by Rachel Reid.