In the waning days of 2025, Canada gifted the world the best holiday present: a beautifully made six-episode TV show filled with gay hockey smut.
Heated Rivalry, based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changer romance novel series, became a smash hit as soon as it dropped on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the U.S. Following two rival professional hockey players who fall in love, the series from Letterkenny creator Jacob Tierney was applauded for its production value, embrace of queer sex, unapologetic cheesiness and for overall being a balm at the end of a very hard year.
The show’s success has led to plenty of online chatter about how Canada should concern ourselves more with shaping our identity around exporting yaoi for the masses. Much of this commentary is phrased as a joke, but there’s actually a seriousness at the root of it, particularly in this moment where Canadian identity—and our distinction from our southern neighbours—is at the forefront of public discourse.
In its embrace of earnest queer love, Heated Rivalry demonstrates the best of Canada and the nationalism we should aspire to. And it’s not the first Canadian TV show that found an audience in the U.S. to do so.
The last time a Canadian TV series saw this much love south of the border was with Schitt’s Creek, Dan and Eugene Levy’s sitcom about a wealthy family that moves into a rural Canadian motel. While we are now a few years removed from peak Schitt’s Creek madness, it’s impossible to understate just how big of a cultural entity the CBC original was. TV Guide named it “The Best Show on TV Right Now” in 2019, with writer Kelly Connolly praising its delicate balance of tone.
“It’s a rare thing to make art that swears people are good. It’s rarer still to do that without being toothless. But Schitt’s Creek is never saccharine; it’s just smart about how weird, terrifying, and worthwhile it is to let yourself grow.”
In addition to its general cultural saturation— “Eww David!” is now amongst the great sitcom catchphrases—the greatest evidence of Schitt’s Creek’s impact came at the 2020 Emmy Awards, where it became the first comedy series to ever sweep all seven major categories. The show rocketed younger stars Dan Levy and Annie Murphy to international stardom and introduced Canadian icons like Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy to a new generation.
And while Heated Rivalry won’t be able to replicate that Emmys success (the show is ineligible due to being entirely produced and funded outside of the U.S.), it shares a lot of commonalities with its more PG Canadian cousin, particularly when thinking about why and how they each found a massive audience outside of Canada.
Schitt’s Creek originally aired on the CBC in Canada and Pop TV in the U.S., but found much of its audience after it became available to stream in the U.S. on Netflix. Heated Rivalry was initially set to exclusively air on the Canadian streamer Crave, before HBO Max picked it up for U.S. streaming shortly before its premiere. According to HBO, the show has been the no. 2 driver of first-time viewers on the platform since its release, and was the platform’s second most-watched series in its first week of release, trailing only It: Welcome to Derry. That’s huge for the little gay hockey show that could.
But it is particularly notable that the two biggest shows that made the leap from Canada to the U.S. are explicitly, unapologetically queer. While each approaches queerness in its own way—and levels of sexual explicitness, let’s be real—there is a commonality in how earnest it all is compared to many American shows.
The romance between Dan Levy’s David Rose and Noah Reid’s Patrick on Schitt’s Creek is carefully and tenderly developed throughout the series. The infamous scene where David explains pansexuality using wine has entered queer lexicon, and Patrick serenading David with Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” still makes me cry every single time I watch it. That the series ends with the pair’s wedding—officiated by O’Hara’s Moira Rose in full drag queen-level pope garb and featuring wedding vows via Mariah Carey—is a testament to its commitment to celebrating queer joy at the forefront. It’s all the twee tenderness of something like Parks and Recreation, but decidedly gay as hell.
The same can be said of the romance between Hudson Williams’s Shane and Connor Storrie’s Ilya on Heated Rivalry. While there’s a fair bit more boning down—Schitt’s Creek tragically never gave us this many bum shots and back arches—a deeply tender and lived-in queer romance is central to both shows. The homophobia of Ilya’s home country of Russia and professional hockey at large exists much more on the periphery than it might in other shows. We don’t see gay bashings, or slurs being thrown around—the central tension in the relationship is less that the main pair are closeted and more that they are big-time hockey rivals. And while I won’t give any spoilers for future seasons, fans of the books know that a happy ending for the central couple is a lot more likely here than on many American productions.
Both shows are also distinctly culturally queer beyond their central characters, from the delightfully camp performance of O’Hara in Schitt’s Creek to the casual casting of trans actors like Harrison Browne in side roles on Heated Rivalry. Queer people were at the core of every step of making both of these shows, and you can see it on screen. Even bisexual actor François Arnaud—who’s gained new fandom for his portrayal of out hockey player Scott Hunter on Heated Rivalry—appeared on Schitt’s Creek back in the day, playing David’s New York photographer ex.
This all matters because the earnest queerness and decency we see on these shows is uniquely, distinctly Canadian—and particularly the best of Canada. There is a fundamental story Canadians like to tell ourselves about ourselves: we are good.
That’s particularly in relation to the world around us, and more specifically our louder and brasher neighbours south of the border. It’s the idea that you can travel anywhere in the world with a maple leaf on your backpack and get a warm welcome. To be Canadian is to bring your neighbour in from the cold, to not start a fight outside of the hockey rink and to buy a cup of Tim Hortons for someone less fortunate.
Critics of this Canadian exceptionalism rightfully point to the many ways Canada is actually deeply flawed—see: our horrendous colonial history, the government’s continued mistreatment of Indigenous people, the simmering far-right white nationalism we’ve got going on. Even in the realm of queerness, we see Canadian politicians legislating away the rights of trans kids and restricting who can play sports.
But amongst all of this there is a kernel of truth to Canada’s “nice guy” reputation we should aspire to.
In the past year, the duality of Canadian identity has been embodied by the “elbows up” phenomenon as the U.S. descends further into Trump’s second term. If anything, Canada feels more distinct from our southern neighbours than ever as we face tariff threats and position ourselves as a safe haven for disgruntled Americans. The idea of what it means to be Canadian is under more debate and scrutiny than ever before in recent memory as we rejig who we are in relation to the U.S.
So what does it mean in this current political moment that one of the biggest TV shows in America is a Canadian-made series about gay hockey players who have a lot of sex? Or that the most successful Canadian show of the past decade is about a family full of queerness that loves and supports one another? Or that these are part of a notable legacy of Canadian TV leading the way in queer portrayals—from Sort Of, to Orphan Black, and dating all the way back to Degrassi.
I’m not saying that American TV is incapable of this sort of earnest queer representation. If Schitt’s Creek had any spiritual successor in recent years, the tender and resoundingly queer Somebody Somewhere certainly fits to the bill. But we also live in a world where TV’s most prominent gay, Ryan Murphy, is pumping out seemingly dozens of queer serial-killer shows and a lot of other popular shows with queer themes that either deal in devastating trauma and heavy subject matter (Pluribus) or winkingly detached irony (Overcompensating).
But Canadian exports like Schitt’s Creek and Heated Rivalry are linked by a fundamental decency and embrace of authentic queer storytelling from authentically queer creators that feels particularly special in this political moment.
Internet reaction to Heated Rivalry has largely swirled around the excellence that is episode 5, “I’ll Believe in Anything,” which at one point over the holidays tied Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias” for the highest-rated episode of TV on IMDB.
In the episode’s final scene, which is set to Canadian indie rock band Wolf Parade’s “I’ll Believe in Anything,” Arnaud’s Scott Hunter comes out to the world as gay by inviting his boyfriend (hunky smoothie barista Kip—this is still based on a romance novel, after all) down onto the ice for a passionate kiss after he wins the championship. Meanwhile, Shane and Ilya watch from their respective homes and come to the realization that maybe they can actually be together. There isn’t a hint of cynicism or detached irony to that moment—not unlike Patrick serenading David with Tina Turner at open mic night. It’s not undercut or winked at—it’s just earnest hope for a better future.
Audiences reacted so strongly to episode 5 because it did feel new and special in this media and political moment. That’s the Canada I want shared with the world. That’s the Canada I want to be a reality.
It’s not just yaoi smut we’re exporting: it’s the joy of a better future.
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