In one of the pivotal moments in “Maurice,” E. M. Forster’s early-twentieth-century novel of homosexual love, the book’s titular protagonist—an upper-class young stockbroker battling secret gay desires—arrives at the British Museum to confront Alec Scudder, a working-class gamekeeper with whom he’s had sex. Fearing blackmail and attempting to deny his true leanings, Maurice has been fending off Alec’s advances since their encounter, and now, offended at being rebuffed, Alec has been threatening to publicly expose him. As the two wander around the museum—one pressuring, the other deflecting—the novel portrays their professed enmity as underscored by the force of attraction, even of love. “They would peer at a goddess or vase, and then move at a single impulse, and their unison was the stranger because on the surface they were at war,” Forster writes. “Alec recommenced his hints—horrible, reptilian—but somehow they did not pollute the intervening silences, and Maurice failed to get afraid or angry . . . . When he chose to reply their eyes met, and his smile was sometimes reflected on the lips of his foe. The belief grew that the actual situation was a blind—a practical joke, almost—and concealed something real, that either desired.”

Forster’s novel may have been written in 1913 (and published, posthumously, in 1971), but its portrayal of Alec and Maurice’s inability to openly articulate their love remains evergreen. This was what struck me as I watched “Heated Rivalry,” a deliciously enjoyable series that began airing in late November on the small Canadian streaming platform Crave, and, simultaneously, on HBO Max, where it quickly became a huge, unexpected hit. (It’s currently the most-watched non-animated show acquired by HBO Max since the platform’s launch, in 2020.) “Heated Rivalry,” which is written and directed by Jacob Tierney, and based on a romance novel of the same name by Rachel Reid, takes place, largely chronologically, between the years 2008 and 2017. Over its six episodes, it tells the story of two secretly gay athletes in the highly masculinist world of pro hockey: Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), a half-Asian Canadian who plays for Montreal, and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), a Russian who plays for Boston. (Williams and Storrie are shatteringly hunky, and, though quite unknown when the series began airing, have since turned into media sensations, appearing in the past couple of weeks on seemingly every single TV show, podcast, awards ceremony, magazine, and website in North America.) After first meeting in the lead-up to their rookie seasons, clean-cut Shane and bad-boy Ilya become the captains of their respective teams and begin to carry on an intermittent love affair on the D.L., while also nurturing an intense rivalry on the ice.

Shane and Ilya’s antagonism is predicated on their direct competition as sportsmen. But, as is the case with Maurice and Alec in Forster’s novel, there’s also something about their overt hostility that is fundamental to their closeted love. When attraction cannot manifest publicly, its passion can only be portrayed as its opposite, and the violent interactions between the hard-bodied pair, who slam and check each other again and again in the rink, are part of this phenomenon. (This doubling is also fodder for comedy on the show: Shane’s mother, who is clueless about her son’s sexual activities, professes her dislike toward his foe by declaring, at one point, “Imagining he’s better than you? Fuck. Him. Right up the butt!”)