The Heated Rivalry Hype Explained

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1:16Hello and welcome to this episode of The Restless Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hines.

1:22Richard Osman:And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello, listeners everywhere. Hello, Marina. Hello, how are you? Oh yeah, I'm not too bad. I'm okay. You? I'm very well, thank you. I'm very excited that we're going to talk about Heated Rivalry because it's such a phenomenon. And I find it fascinating. And also, there's been lots and lots of questions about Heated Rivalry. I had to choose this one just because of the name of the writer. Beninus Logan or Benignus Logan. Either way, I love it. And he's a real person because we just Googled him just in case that we'd missed a kind of Hugh Janus type, you know, pun. But it's not Benignus, Benignus Logan.

1:55Richard Osman:Thank you so much. He says, why has heated rivalry become such a phenomenon? The experience in the UK may well be different, but here in Australia, he's Australian, I've been struck by how strongly it has resonated across very different demographics, even though it wasn't on a streaming platform like Netflix. Talk us through what heated rivalry is and talk us through what a phenomenon it's been as well. Okay, it is a gay hockey romance based on some books by Rachel Reid. I thought you were going to say Rachel Reeves. No, that I think would have somehow been less of a hit. That'd be a hell of a side project, though.

2:30Yeah, I mean, she could use one. So it's a Canadian production and they released it on HBO Max and it's now come over here to Sky and Now. And it's only just come, it's belatedly, so we know it's a phenomenon because it's kind of, it came out at the end of last year in the States and Canada and it's been a big thing. They had no real marketing campaign, but what they did have was a waiting fan base. It's a gay drama, but it's mostly female fans. I mean, which is interesting because straight women are the primary audience for gay romance novels. And they have been for decades. And there's lots of different reasons for that.

3:10You know, people, they can enjoy desire and the emotions and whatever, but without that sort of feeling of gendered baggage or thinking about, unable to stop thinking about yourself in that situation, anything. Anyway, by the way, gay hockey romance is a big genre.

3:28Richard Osman:Yes, a big thing, right? And it's a sub-genre, but it's a big one. And she's got a series called Game Changers. And if you look at the kind of gay hockey romance, there are literally hundreds of titles. and it's huge on BookTok. There's various reasons, you know, it's like a really, really tough game, but then people love the idea of kind of tenderness behind the scenes. Yes, there's a lot of sort of fighting and physical contact. But there's been a sort of, I think the last thing I read at time of recording this was that there'd been a 700 % increase in sales in those titles, which by the way, already sell really well and we're going to come back to that.

4:02It's a good time of year for a show to come out. People have some time off and it's very bingeable, whatever they all are they're all under an hour all the episodes there's six of them um it is sports adjacent that category that we and female love we keep talking about that we talk about it with something like drive to survive um you know the behind the scenes of it all um and think about things like that hallmark collaboration with the kansas chiefs where chavis calcey played lots of these sports which in the old days would have kind of recoiled from all sorts of different romance associations now understand that it is bringing lots and lots of people in and it's it's what's interesting is that there's something about hockey it's the violence it's the ballet it's all of it um but they've even started like they it's some of it's bled into real life they played that tati there's that tati song all the things he said is in the is on the soundtrack and they played it at a boston bruins game and apparently the crowd just went utterly nuts so what do we know about romance novels they really shot up in popularity during the the pandemic um all this sort of stuff that like people don't like sex on tv you see a lot about this don't you like gen z they don't want sex on tv um and i read a story recently that lots of the agencies were dropping their intimacy coordinators because there wasn't such a call for them well there's a lot of sex and this reminds me a lot first of all i found it absolutely fascinating i'm just can i just when i watched the first few minutes of it i thought i've got to go back and see how this has been done.

5:33Okay, we know it's based on these books. They meet in the first second of this show. They meet in the first shot of this show, these two guys. It's them on their own around the back somewhere. There's immediately a vibe. You're not under any... Okay, you get into story so quickly. Then the announcers, then they cut somewhere else. Some hockey announcers are doing the exposition telling you that this is the Russian bad boy, this is the Canadian all-star, whatever it is.

5:57Richard Osman:Are they the people in the... The Russian and the Canadian. Yeah, okay. They tell you their characters. The hockey announcers effectively tell you their characters. Then it's six months later. They're constantly, things are saying three weeks later, six months later, whatever. Then you see it's the draft, and they're looking longingly at each other. So the draft is the bit in ice hockey when you decide who plays for which teams. In any sport where the teams bid for the kind of best players and everyone's, you know. And all of that is in the first three minutes. Okay, in the first episode, there's no meaningful B-plot whatsoever.

6:27So I'm really interested in that kind of thing because I remember watching things first with my children, like films that had been made quite a long time ago. And I did notice a sort of restlessness because you get into... Set up used to take ages. You didn't get into story till quite late. Then you started seeing like all the Marvel years where you get right in the middle of it, right from the start. And James Bond always used to do that. There'd be like a really hot action sequence. Yeah, a cold open. But I used to think, oh, wonderful that I'll ever be able to watch anything slowly build. And they can actually now.

6:56Having said that, there is none of that here whatsoever. You get right into it right from the very start. There's no possible doubt what show you are watching exactly when more than 20 seconds of the show has passed and you know exactly what it is.

7:10Richard Osman:You've got gay, you've got romance, you've got hockey. Straight away. I'm watching a gay hockey romance. There's so much exposition because people just tell you what the characters are. It's incredibly simplistic, but it is compelling. It reminds me a lot of Mills and Boone stories in that you always knew that there'd be... It was formulaic. formulaic there's like three instances of sex in each episode that used to be the case of mills and boone i can't remember we used to read these at school and you know it'd be like page 51 they first you know it's and there's and it's often that rivals to lovers and they were both ice hockey players mills and boone yeah that's where they met uh they uh but and then they used to get more raunchy those books and i thought oh my god my girls at school will remind me oh yeah they call them temptations they're mills and boone they probably have gay romances in mills and boone now i don't even know if they do but they probably do because this is a big thing for a big female audience.

7:57So I'm interested in that about this show. The other thing I'm interested in, which I've seen a couple of people say is why is the show not on Amazon Prime? Okay. Something, what do we know about Amazon apart from it's the Everything Corporation? They have all of this data about what people buy and what people are actually reading, what they're interested in. Why don't they just make the show? I mean, you probably don't need to be Amazon Prime and have the internal data to see all these things. But that thing that you often talk about, which is like these old white executives, green light these shows that are sort of things that they think ought to be on television or whatever it is.

8:28And that's not always the case. Of course it isn't. And that's a complete, you know, is a big generalization. But saying, what about we green light a gay hockey romance? Because by the way, gay hockey romances are really big. And you'd be like, what? Okay, but try it and look what happens. And it's interesting that we don't see things that are big on, you know, that there are these big sub genres, these things that are big on booktop, but we just don't see adaptations of them. It's like it was a surprise that It Ends With Us was a big movie. It was a surprise that It Ends With Us was a big movie in Hollywood.

8:59These things, even it's like, oh, what, Colleen Hoover's got some people to go out, some movie theatres actually. I'm surprised.

9:05Richard Osman:The Housemaid, oh, Freedom of Adden. People who are reading 12 Freedom of Adden books a year are happy to go and see her in the theatre. In which Sydney Sweeney is looking really young and hot and she's doing really, I mean, people want to see these things. Saying, oh, no one goes to cinema, No one watches thrillers anymore. They seem to be watching The Housemaid. You know, The Housemaid might as well be something like Jagged Edge. There's no difference from things that people were watching three or four decades ago. I mean, a controversial take would be, you know, if you let the auteurs decide what people watch, then it's an issue.

9:36Richard Osman:And actually, sometimes when you let the execs decide what they watch by looking at data, sometimes you get hits. Yes. You know what? Not all the time. Not all the time. But there has to be a happy balance somewhere. Isn't it odd that we haven't yet seen a single breakout mega hit of romanticy, a genre that has been ruling the waves in terms of readership and propping up half the rest of publishing? Isn't it weird that we haven't actually seen something? And there are lots of things that you could say are within that genre. I get it. But they're not like something. Twilight, you might say, is the sort of.

10:10Yeah, but that's a while back now. I'm talking about this current wave of it all. Absolutely. And what, you know, you're not watching the big new Netflix thing isn't a romantic thing. By the way, lots of these things are in development. And I'm not trying to say that they've completely missed this trend. Of course they haven't. That would be too obvious. But it is odd that some of the things and some of the currents, they just don't surf on them. And I'm really interested as to why not. And I'm interested. So to summarize, I would say that I'm very interested in Heathly rivalry. I'm interested how they've done it.

10:36I can see that coming later, I've only watched the first two, that there are things that will be deemed to be a subplot. but there certainly isn't anything in the first episode and you are right into it in the first shot. Not the first scene, the first shot. I find it absolutely fascinating.

10:51Richard Osman:And from a publishing point of view, I find it interesting as well that, as you say, this is genre writing, niche genre writing. But Rachel Reid is writing, if you look at her motivation, she was a big NHL fan and felt sort of unrepresented in that fan base. So wrote the thing that she wanted to write, wrote it in such a way that it found an audience. and I'll always say you know to authors don't write the thing that someone else tells you to write write the thing that you love right because you know you literally never know you know when Rachel Reid started writing these eight years ago if you'd said oh by the way this is the woman who's going to get like a massive tv deal that's going to have the biggest um you know the hugest tv hit you it wouldn't have occurred to anybody the stuff that really breaks through is stuff that's written from the heart, that's written well, and that's written from the heart.

11:42Richard Osman:And you see it time and time again. Colleen Hoover, Freedah McFadden, Rachel Reid, Alice Oseman, all of these authors, all of these writers, not writing for a market, but writing for a fan base, growing that fan base, and giving people what they want. So whatever you're writing at home, I say there is hope. Almost every single of the biggest-selling authors of the last five years have been people who were self-published and people who wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote the thing that they loved and then went absolutely massive. I wish the BBC was doing a big romantic, like a massive, like just putting a lot of eggs into the romantic basket.

12:19EastEnders. But we've got all the locations. We've got great locations in this country for romantic. Castles and fairies and weird demons and all of this stuff. We've got it all. And I really wish that people would just go all in. They are quite expensive and they're not the cheapest. This isn't, by the way, this is not expensive at all. heated rivalry but you just need a couple of hotel rooms quite honestly I've seen the first two episodes you know and a rink and a rink yeah that's it that's your locations but anyway it's really interesting and I recommend watching it just to sort of see how it's put together um and even if you don't want to go any further with it although I like romances and so I find it interesting

12:55Richard Osman:yeah and also to see uh just the first flowering of a funnel one yeah yeah here's one for you rich songs about places Kate Burling is asking, my daughter is obsessed with Taylor Swift and Welcome to New York is on regular rotation in our house. It made me wonder, which city has the most songs written about it? Is it New York? What are your favourite songs about places? There's a lot of questions in one there. I love, there's certain places that are never mentioned in songs and certain places. There are not a lot of songs about Swindon, for example. You know, Route 66, you know, there's all sorts of songs about it.

13:29Richard Osman:Funny enough, Billy Bragg once wrote a song called A13, The Trunk Road to the Sea, just because he said, we don't write songs about British roads. But yeah, there are certain places which are mentioning a huge amount of songs, but almost everywhere in the world are not mentioning any songs at all. A massive survey was done by a company called Datanauts who looked into the whole Spotify database. They looked at the titles of songs and the lyrics of songs. So thank you for Datanauts because it means we can give Kate and Kate's daughter a definitive answer as to which place is mentioned the most often.

14:00Richard Osman:Number five... Texas. Number four, Paris. Paris, Texas. I don't know what happens there. Number three, London. Not bad. Number two, California. And number one, Kate Burling and Kate's daughter. You're absolutely right. It is New York. I mean, you would think it would be New York, wouldn't you? It also appears in the most charting songs referencing a city. That's in the lyrics. That's number one there as well. London and Los Angeles are second and third on that. But if you do mention unusual places and so on, it can have a big impact on places. Chapel Rowan mentions Saskatchewan in her song The Subway.

14:41Richard Osman:It says, I'm moving to Saskatchewan. And the Saskatchewan Tourist Board said it's the first time ever they've seen a blip in Google Trends. I've seen one from episode one of Heated Rivalry, let me tell you. Oh, really? Is it Saskatchewan-based? Yeah. A lot of the hotel rooms in the area. There's a very early tournament, like within a minute and a half of this thing starting. Don't they mention Saskatchewan in one of the Muppets songs as well? Yeah, I think so. Moving Right Along, that's got Saskatchewan in it, but seem to not move the needle quite as much as Chapel Roan. No. But very, very specific places can get mentioned as well, which also have an effect.

15:17Richard Osman:So Taylor Swift doesn't just talk about New York. She talks about the pub, The Black Dog, which her ex, Joe Orwin, is believed to have visited when they broke up. so she mentioned the Black Dog. And in the month of that album release, the Black Dog, there's a pub in Vauxhall. It had more Google searches than Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge. They constantly have to repaint the toilets because they're always covered in Taylor Swift graffiti. But listen, it's a good business to be in. Tough time to run a pub. Better than the pub trade. Yeah, exactly. Fans go there constantly. They now hold Taylor Swift quiz nights.

15:53Richard Osman:There's a cafe in LA, which is if you're ever in LA it's a wonderful place for breakfast called the Beachwood Cafe and it was always very chilled very very laid back and then Harry Styles mentions it in one of his songs and now you go there and there's you know so lovely you can still get a seat but there's just people it's Instagram non-stop people taking their photos outside a beach and you know lots of lyrics can can genuinely transform places if you think about Liverpool you think about Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, which are real places. I mean, those are huge tourist meccas. It's just a street and, you know, it's a street in an area and, you know, there's huge tourist meccas.

16:32Richard Osman:The Eagle song Take It Easy, which... Jackson Brown wrote. Jackson Brown wrote. Has the lyric Standing on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona, which is a famous thing. And there is actually now Standing on the Corner Park in Winslow is a theme park based on that song. What's the theme? a girl my lord in a flatbed Ford and it's not like a theme it's not based on the song there's a theme park with roller coasters and things but it happens to be on a corner in Winslow Arizona because the idea of being on a corner in Winslow Arizona it seems so magical because of the song and now there's a roller coaster there it's not really the vibe of the song is it it sort of is no it's the open road it's American cheap gas your birthright driving around the trouble is next door is Hotel California you literally can't get out so it's one of those things if you if you do get mentioned in a song of a very famous person it's a huge deal but not if you are new york or london or paris which get mentioned in pretty much every song ever but yeah new york in terms of lyrics and in terms of song titles is the most cited place in the world so um kate you are absolutely right i love it when they mention place names right shall we go to a break let's do that

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19:11Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Marina, this question is right up your street. Josh Newans asks, I was recently reading Eric Roberts' Wikipedia page. Yeah, that's some... Come on. It would have taken a while, let me tell you. That's a Restless Entertainment listener, isn't it? And found he has over 735 acting credits, including 45 films in 2024. How does he manage this? Does his agent just say yes to everything? Are other actors just lazy? Great question. It is a great question. And he is... Personally, I really actually like Eric Roberts as a look, as a performer. He's Julia Roberts' brother. He's Emma Roberts' father.

19:50But yeah, you're right. He's appeared in the most American movies of any actor. And his career is really interesting. He was, you know, early on in his career. I mean, he has got that great look. He should be in a Quentin Tarantino film. And I think he would be the sort of person that Quentin Tarantino would have a kind of cult crush on. So maybe in Tarantino's last film, I hope he finds something for Eric Roberts. But he was in good movies like Runaway Train, Star 80. and quite a lot of bad movies like that one was well not when I say bad movies I've watched it about 16 times Sylvester Stallone plays an explosives specialist and he's the baddie

20:24Richard Osman:oh I thought he was playing someone who works at a hospital yeah just a consultant just an ENT yeah the specialist will be with you soon he would be of interest you'll never guess who the specialist was he would have been interested in ENT because he had he had a massive coke problem and he's the first to talk about it and that's really what got in the way of his career he also had a car crash but particularly in the 80s He was a big coke addict and he got the reputation that he was difficult, etc. OK, let me say, as you see for that credit list, he is no longer difficult. He said he just the reason he does this is he says he loves working and he wants to work.

20:58And he said he got in real frustration at one point. He said to his agent, I'll take anything as long as there's one good thing about it. His wife told him to do music videos. So he does like The Killers, Mr. Bright's. I mean, he's done amazing. He's done Acorn, Mariah Carey, Rihanna. And he now sometimes can get between three movie roles a day. Huh? Yeah, I know it's crazy because he'll just appear for a bit. One day he had a small Dark Knight role for Christopher Nolan. And then he went and did something called Witless Protection, which I think had Larry the Cable Guy in it. He's huge in Russia, but he does book.

21:34He basically works every day. And the wife and the agent, they're really into him working every day because that's what he wants to do. and he says it's been a blast I've seen the world for free he did something called Sharktopus I mean he does some really bad Sharktopus but the good thing about that was that he had this free incredible beach holiday and so if you're a director you're thinking everyone knows lots of people you know it's not like he's an A-lister of course he's not

21:59Richard Osman:name recognition but he's got name recognition and he's been in so many things that you're like oh it's that guy you know and so directors doing a low budget or almost not quite no budget will spend sort of lots of their money on Eric Roberts because then Eric Roberts is in your film and he is without preciousness. Now, sometimes years can seem particularly good for him because as always with these films, it takes a lot of time to get the funding and then you've got to get the funding to edit it and the funding to, you know, this is a constant battle, tiny, tiny budget independent film. So they'll sometimes stack and then you'll be like, I'm sorry, I literally don't understand how that many of your movies can come out this year.