More than rivals isn’t just a television series; it’s a cultural touchstone, captivating audiences worldwide. The Canadian production, initially a low-budget project filmed in just one month and based on novels exploring same-sex desire within the world of ice hockey, has unexpectedly drawn nearly nine million viewers per episode in the United States.
A New Kind of Romance Takes the Ice
The series’ explicit portrayal of gay romance is resonating with a surprisingly broad audience.
- The series gained unexpected popularity, attracting a large female viewership.
- Its explicit content stands in contrast to a broader trend of decreasing sexual content in film.
- While initially impactful, the show’s dramatic structure can become repetitive.
- The series explores themes of secrecy and internalized homophobia.
The premise feels familiar—a modern twist on classic tales of forbidden love, echoing stories from Tristan and Isolde to Bridgerton, where social barriers or clashing personalities keep lovers apart. Here, the obstacles are two professional hockey players: the Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams, a compelling mix of magnetism and stoicism) and the Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie, a breakout revelation). They clash on the ice, but relentlessly pursue each other off it, finding intimacy in hotel rooms and exclusive apartments. Shane embodies privilege, a prodigy managed by his parents and their team of representatives. Ilya, shaped by a harsh Soviet upbringing—orphaned, raised by a military father, and burdened by a troubled brother—represents a stark contrast. Their connection unfolds over nearly a decade, beginning in 2008, through furtive meetings and coded text messages, a secrecy that feels ironic in an era that often proclaims progress on LGBTQ+ rights.
The result boldly distances itself from the sugarcoated chastity that dominates many ‘queer’ fictions. The problem is that, after the initial impact, the series doesn’t have much more to offer
From the outset, the series boldly plays its strongest card: explicit sexuality, a rarity in contemporary film and television. In a landscape where sexual content in top-grossing U.S. films has decreased by nearly 40% since 2000, according to a 2024 analysis by The Economist, More than rivals wastes no time, bringing its protagonists together within the first 15 minutes. The show doesn’t shy away from prolonged nudity (though avoiding full frontal shots), masturbation, fellatio, semen ingestion, and even references to anal dildos. This frankness sets it apart from the often-sanitized portrayals in many queer narratives.
However, after the initial shock and allure, More than rivals struggles to sustain momentum. The plot settles into a predictable pattern: endless text exchanges brimming with double entendre, energetic hockey sequences—which the series’ creator, Jacob Tierney, a former actor and co-writer of Xavier Dolan, efficiently resolves for those uninterested in the sport—and carefully choreographed sex scenes set to melancholic pop music. This cycle repeats for five episodes.
The series balances serious themes with playful puns—”a banana always fixes everything”—and a generous sprinkling of expletives with suggestive meanings. This tonal tightrope act doesn’t always succeed, but the resulting ambiguity possesses a certain charm. The visual style, characterized by soft zooms and elegant lighting, initially masks the underlying emptiness. But eventually, the dialogue returns us to a superficiality that’s only tolerable through a deliberately ironic, “camp” reading—a perspective the series doesn’t fully embrace.
The series’ most compelling moments are reserved for a secondary storyline. Alongside the central desire between Shane and Ilya, a quieter romance blossoms between Scott Hunter (François Arnaud, whose character deserved more screen time), another player in the closet, and a barista specializing in fruit smoothies. This hopeful narrative is quickly tempered by the same secrecy and shame that plague the main couple. The fifth episode culminates in the series’ strongest scene (spoiler: both characters are fully clothed). Another standout moment: Shane drafts a message to his lover after a disappointing encounter, a message he ultimately doesn’t send: “We haven’t even kissed.”
Homophobia isn’t explicitly depicted in the series; it’s assumed. It dictates the protagonists’ hidden lives, manifesting as a constant undercurrent rather than overt insults or attacks. This subtle portrayal reflects an era that believed it had overcome collective discrimination—the series begins in 2008, coinciding with Barack Obama’s initial presidential victory, and ends just before Donald Trump’s election—revealing an unsettling truth on screen.
The central question is whether this subtlety is intentional or a form of hesitancy, a reluctance to complicate the central conflict (or, in other words, to politicize it). The world presented is curiously devoid of dating apps, safe sex practices, or any realistic consideration of risk. Gay sex is unrealistically portrayed as frictionless and without complications, as if the bodies, always athletic and idealized, simply obey the script. What begins as bold ultimately feels somewhat conservative: queer representation entering the mainstream, but only in a polished, sanitized, and ultimately harmless version. What if the characters were poor or overweight? That would be a very different, and likely less successful, series.
As the plot progresses, it shifts toward a more conventional emotional landscape, abandoning the initial thrill of secrecy and the dynamic of dominance and submission that characterized the protagonists’ early encounters. The unattainable fantasy of “saving” love emerges, capable of erasing past trauma, alongside a disturbing idea the series doesn’t fully explore: the difficulty of giving and receiving affection after experiencing only hate. Perhaps this is the series’ biggest flaw: More than rivals heats up, but rarely ignites.
