Throughout the first few months of 2026, there has been no shortage of heartbreaking, breathtaking and laugh-inducing television shows to keep viewers entertained. From romantic teen dramedies and dramatic (yet heartfelt) medical series’ to LGBTQ+ hockey stories and historical rom-coms, 2026 has been filled with an abundance of new content.
Throughout the past five years, television has been completely reworked, and at-home streaming has overtaken traditional cable television In 2020, 33% of adults said they preferred streaming and 60% preferred cable, yet in 2025, these numbers changed to 49% and 44% respectively, according to an article by Forbes. Through streaming, viewers gain more control over what they watch, when they watch it and how long it takes them to finish it.
Recently, 34 members of Poly Prep’s Upper School community were surveyed about the popularity of this year’s television series. Where students were able to select as many options as they’d liked, 47% of all respondents said they had watched “Heated Rivalry,” 12 responded that they had watched “XO Kitty,” and both “The Pitt” and “Love Story” garnered 10 watches.
“The reason I watched [Heated Rivalry] is because my tutor watched it and she said ‘I think this is a big monumental moment for the gay community.’…So I said ‘Okay, if you think this, maybe I should watch it!,’” said Anna Reisen ’27.
The series, created by Actor and Director Jacob Tierney, is based off of two novels by romance novelist Rachel Reid and follows two closeted queer-identifying hockey players on different teams — Ilya Rozanoff (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams)— who meet in their rookie season and continue to build a relationship for over a decade, according to the BBC. What starts as something detached from emotional meaning quickly becomes an emotional attraction that binds the two
wherever they go. The series explores themes of identity, love and self-expression through the challenges of being a professional hockey player in the narrow-minded National Hockey League (NHL), a league that has not always been so accepting of LGBTQ+ players.
From a commercial standpoint, this series was not set up to completely overtake the media. The series was filmed in only a month, with a budget of just over $3.6 million, and a cast full of mostly “unknowns,” according to the BBC. These previously unknown actors, Storrie and Williams, have taken over the media, becoming the new stars of 2026, catching the eyes of both directors and viewers. So the question remains: What is so special about “Heated Rivalry”?
“[There are] a lot of sexual interactions…but there are elements of romance and the gay experience as well and what it’s like to be closeted. I don’t know if I found it the most universally relatable because I’m not a famous hockey player or a guy, but I think there were some elements that I kind of ,” said Reisen. “It’s very hard to take [some] show[s]
seriously. I don’t think that, but a lot of people do think that, especially when it’s about the queer community. And I think by making it very sexual and masculine, it allowed the show to share those deeper emotions without turning into a joke.”
“There was so much controversy about it, and if people were making it controversial and upsetting, then they were taking the wrong lessons out of it,” said Stevie Ziffer ’27. “There’s not a lot of gay couples ever [in the media] and I think that adding awareness is great and especially in such a way of just celebrating their relationship and going through it. It felt very healing.”
Another popular TV series circulating in 2026 is “XO Kitty,” created by author and showrunner Jenny Han, the writer of books series’ “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” and “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” The series follows teenage Kitty Song Covey — the younger sister of the protagonist in “To All The Boys” — as she navigates her new life at the Korean In-
dependent School of Seoul (KISS), faced with matchmaking, new friendships, love and her own mother’s past in Korea.
Reisen described the series as a “romcom show [where] there’s a lot of drama” that is especially fun to follow after reading or watching the “To All The Boys” trilogy.
Soleil Peña ’27 shared a similar perspective, and said she “loved watching Kitty’s character grow up to have her own adventure,” and that she was able to relate to Covey through her own experiences studying abroad. Both Reisen and Peña also said that the drama of the show, although meant to invoke serious emotions, leaves them with more laughter than tears. However, this is exactly the reason they keep on returning to it season after season. “I grew up on telenovelas, and I really enjoy them. And that’s why I like “XO Kitty” so much. I would recommend this show to people who like telenovelas and k-dramas, because they’re very similar in the dramatic aspects,” said Peña.
As one last piece of guidance to potential viewers, Peña advises that watchers should step outside of their comfort zone and try something new in 2026. “I was surprised by a new genre this year, maybe you can be too!”
