Ravishing actors, charged glances, buttocks like pneumatic hams … this is one steamy love story. But it’s far more than just a porny sport-based bodice-ripper
I was surprised to learn that ice hockey romance is a genre, a popular one. Surprising, but it makes sense. Love in a cold setting has a fairytale quality. It’s why the great Russian romances endure, though they aren’t relatable. Most of us don’t sit by windows, waiting for a horse to bring word that our cousin has survived the winter in Smolensk. Perhaps it’s time for a modern Doctor Zhivago? Enter Heated Rivalry (Saturday 10 January, 9pm, Sky Atlantic), a Canadian queer romp so hot it threatens to scorch the ice it skates upon.
Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are star players from Montreal and Moscow respectively, mysteriously drawn to each other on the rink, in the full glare of the media. Well, not that mysteriously. The co-leads get down to business almost immediately, with a not-quite meet cute in a shower room. Every episode thereafter features charged glances, sweaty necks and muscular pumping. Even the camera feels as if it’s in lust, gliding over 8%-fat sports star bodies and the glass walls of luxury flats. It’s an audacious feat, making ice hockey sexy. Those padded uniforms usually make wearers resemble the Thing from The Fantastic Four.
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© Photograph: Sphere Abacus/Sky
© Photograph: Sphere Abacus/Sky
© Photograph: Sphere Abacus/Sky
Our popular readers’ tips column has been running for 20 years. We’ve selected some highlights from the past 12 months to help you plan your 2026 adventures
• Enter this week’s competition, on life-changing holidays
© Photograph: leoks/Shutterstock
© Photograph: leoks/Shutterstock
© Photograph: leoks/Shutterstock
I had been a member of the Children of God for two decades, but was growing disillusioned with its controlling behaviour and increasingly worrying sexual practices. Then I heard Michael Stipe’s lyrics and was set on a path to freedom
In 1991, I was living in a commune with 200 other people in Japan, as a member of a cult called the Children of God, which preached that the world was going to end in 1993. Everything I did – from where I slept each night, to who I was allowed to sleep with – was decided by the head of my commune. I was encouraged to keep a diary, and then turn it over to the leaders every night, so they could comb through it for signs of dissent. I was only allowed to listen to cult-sanctioned music, and I was only allowed to watch movies with happy endings, because those were the types of films of which the cult’s supreme leader – David Berg – approved. The Sound of Music was one of Berg’s favourite films, so we watched it on repeat.
By the time I was living in Japan, I was in my mid-30s, and I’d been part of the cult for 20 years. I was indoctrinated by a young hippy couple when I was 16, and persuaded to run away from my family and join a sect of the cult near my home town in Canada. I was a lonely teenager and desperately searching for some kind of meaning. Everybody I knew worked in the lumber mill in my small town, and the thought that I was doomed to live that life scared the hell out of me. The first time I visited the commune, everyone hugged me when I walked in, just to say “hello”. It was intoxicating.
But by 1991, after two decades in the cult, my faith was weakening. It was becoming clearer to me that Berg was wrong about the world ending in 1993. A whole series of events that were meant to directly precede the Second Coming hadn’t happened, and Berg – who lived in secrecy and communicated with his followers by written “prophecies” – kept issuing increasingly unconvincing excuses.
I was also becoming more resistant to the way the cult leaders sought to control the most intimate parts of my life. When I joined the cult, it was very sexually conservative. If you wanted to date another member of the community, you had to ask for permission from the leadership. But as the years went by, Berg started preaching a doctrine of sexual freedom, and ordering his members to couple-swap. I had got married to another cult member in the 1980s, and was living with her in a Children of God commune in Japan. Because I resisted couple-swapping I was forcibly separated from my wife as a punishment – and ordered to live in a different commune on my own.
There was also an even darker side to the Children of God that I was trying to shut my eyes to. Berg had released a written decree which permitted adult cult members to have sex with children. I never witnessed any sexual contact with children, and while I did read that decree when it was released in the 1980s, I refused to accept it. Still, it horrified me.
Forcibly separated from my wife, and with Berg’s teachings becoming more twisted, I was in a state of spiritual turmoil. But it was only when I heard REM’s song Losing My Religion that I was pushed to action. Cult members were allowed to own Walkmans, because the Children of God released their own music on cassette, but we were forbidden from listening to “worldly” music. As my will to blindly obey crumbled, I began to secretly tune in to the American armed forces radio station that broadcast in Japan. (Technically, I’d always had the power to covertly listen to music this way, but it’s a sign of how indoctrinated I was that I had never allowed myself to do so before.) One day, Losing My Religion came on, and I remember hearing it for the first time and freezing. I physically stopped walking.
© Illustration: Martin O'Neill/The Guardian
© Illustration: Martin O'Neill/The Guardian
© Illustration: Martin O'Neill/The Guardian
From Barclays, Cadbury and Clarks to Nith and Wampool, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 What identically named comic strips debuted in the US and UK in March 1951?
2 Which pharaoh was known by later Egyptians as the Great Ancestor?
3 Which Spanish-language singer is the world’s most-streamed artist?
4 Which big cat has the widest geographical distribution?
5 Who was the first woman to train a Grand National winner?
6 What element has the lowest boiling point?
7 Which artist has museums in Pittsburgh and Slovakia?
8 Which country has more than 9m abandoned homes?
What links:
9 Billie Eilish; George Gershwin; Barry Gibb; Robert Sherman?
10 Annan; Dee; Eden; Esk; Kirtle Water; Nith; Wampool?
11 Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow; nymph of Ogygia; Jacques Cousteau’s ship?
12 Elgin City; Juventus; Marseille; Swindon Town?
13 Barclays; Cadbury; Clarks; Fry’s; Lloyds; Rowntree’s?
14 Rose; tree; bird; arrow; globe; poppy?
15 Nicola Adams; Mel B; Alan Bennett; Erling Haaland; Gabby Logan; Marco Pierre White?
© Photograph: Allen J Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
© Photograph: Allen J Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
© Photograph: Allen J Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Toutes les semaines, écoutez Sortie de veille, le podcast hebdomadaire de MacGeneration ! On débat de l'actualité Apple et tech des derniers jours en une quinzaine de minutes.
Pour bien démarrer l’année, nous dessinons les grands enjeux de 2026 pour Apple. Entre l’arrivée probable d’un iPhone Fold, un Siri plus intelligent très attendu et des remaniements dans l’équipe dirigeante, les douze prochains mois s’annoncent très animés.
Dans cette émission, nous revenons également sur le lancement de ChatGPT Santé, sur l’Apple Watch qui disparait d’un podium et sur le CES, le grand salon de la tech qui s’est tenu à Las Vegas.
Pour écouter Sortie de veille, c'est simple :
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