The Grandfather of Forensic Crime Drama Television: where it all began...

[Quincy Examiner]

For those of us curious about where all the C.S.I. Crossing Jordan, and Diagnosis Murder concepts might have come from, why not examine or revisit a retro classic - Quincy, M.E. on Netflix any time. Here's a thumbnail sketch for those who don't know much about the first crime-fighting coroner...

The Quincy character was originally created and written by Lou Shaw and Glen A. Larson. According to a Larson interview conducted by the Archive for American Television, the unsigned script established the lead character to play "a swinging young doctor. Women love him because he's a doctor; unfortunately, they find out that he works with dead bodies. As he only works with dead people, they're not as attracted to him."

With this in mind, we see that Quince has a comical side but can also use his understanding of proper crime scene investigative procedure to call attention to contemporary social and societal ills. In fact, actor Jack Klugman has described Quincy as a person to fight injustice and stamp it out wherever it exists. As the grandfather of all future forensic crime drama serials, He represents anyone who knows something is wrong and wants to do something about it!

Klugman first approached the role from the point of view that Quincy is really two good guys rolled into one - a doctor and a cop. In addition, Quincy is a bit of a muckraker and relies on his formal training in deductive reasoning to ferret out the rights and wrongs of a case. As such, Quince approaches each case with suspicion and each autopsy with the hope of determining what went wrong and why the victim's life tragically came to an end. In the pilot, he comments to another physician, that his training is specialized in paranoia and pathology. Quincy states, I was taught never to trust anything and to disbelieve everything else something in me goes tilt when I see life dead before its time, and I want to do something about it (Pilot episode: Go Fight City Hall - To the Death).

In addition, the first episode introduces us to his casual girlfriend, Lee Potter. Usually, if Quince is not at the lab, his boat, or Danny's, he can be reached at Lees apartment. In a later episode entitled, Promises to Keep, we learn that Quincy was originally married to a woman named Helen. However, she dies of a brain tumor before the series begins, and this is what leads Quincy to taking a career in forensic pathology. Ironically, actress Anita Gillette plays the role of his wife and returns again as Psychologist Dr. Emily Hanover to marry Quince in the last season of this well-crafted crime-drama television series.