Whenever someone says that johnlock couldn’t be canon, because it would ruin the source material, I always have to mention Granada Sherlock Holmes.
Produced in a time when suggesting that Holmes and Watson might have been in a romantic or sexual relationship could get you black listed from Sherlockian communities, this series thumbed its nose and pushed as many boundaries as it could.
One of the first screen adaptations to showcase the equality in the partnership between the two men, it gave us a Watson who was anything but the bumbling oaf he had been in previous works. This Watson was intelligent, strong, protective, and loving. When he wasn’t doctoring his Holmes after scrapes, he was comforting him in his failure, or helping to direct him toward success.
Rather than marry Watson off, Granada kept him a happy, if often put upon, bachelor. This deviation from the source Canon was handled smoothly, by occasionally sending Watson on much needed holidays or keeping him busy at his surgery, for stories that needed the men to be separated at the beginning.
Beyond the less than subtle hints into the nature of the relationship between Holmes and Watson, Granada is noted for including a story line in one of their most well known films that dealt with why that very relationship needed to be kept a secret. Working off of a few scant lines found in the original Charles Augustus Milverton, the film The Master Blackmailer featured a subplot of a soldier taking his life, when his love affair with a man is found out. This is a subject which leads to Lestrade making the remark that it isn’t the first time it has happened to a soldier, and it certainly won’t be the last, a remark that ends with Watson all but slamming the door to Baker Street behind the inspector.
There is hardly a scene throughout the show- which ran for a decade, and included five feature length films- that doesn’t show the gentle intimacy between Holmes and Watson. Whether he is threatening an armed man with a chair, insisting that his detective eat, or jumping between Holmes and a hired thug, Watson is every inch the devoted companion. As the series progresses, and the actors change, Watson subtly evolves from a man who loves the excitement of the world Holmes has shown him, into one that wants them to slow down and think of the future. There is a delightful scene in one of the later episodes, which shows Watson obviously relieved to learn that there is money in Holmes’ family.
And of course, nothing says canon otp, like giant floating rainbows splashed across the backgrounds of their scenes together.
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