First viewed : Summer 1981
This U.S. series had been running on ITV since 1977 as a late night item but its popularity eventually convinced programme chiefs that it could work in a prime time slot.
Quincy did have some things going for it, an above -average lead in Jack Klugman , previously best known for the TV series The Odd Couple and a memorable title sequence with its row of fainting police cadets going down like dominoes as Dr Quincy set to work on an autopsy. However, it is unfortunately best remembered for being extremely formulaic and running what seemed like the same story every week.
Your average Quincy episode went like this. The good doctor received a corpse to examine and an explanation from either his boss or a police chief as to the circumstances but, Holmes-like, Quincy usually always smelled a rat. For the next half-hour, Quincy sniffed around the case without getting anywhere, then, at exactly the same point in each episode, he'd have a lightbulb moment, usually prompted by some mundane remark from his Watson , Japanese-American lab assistant Sam ( Robert Ito ) which enabled Quincy to prove he was right all along. Episode after episode stuck to this template rigidly. My friend Francis assured me that this was only the second most predictable show on TV behind Hart to Hart. I never watched that but found his assertion hard to believe.
Despite that, the series was undoubtedly popular and there was a lot of it, with nearly 150 episodes made over seven years between 1976 and 1983. Klugman died in 2012 aged 90.
I see you've used a screengrab from the legendary "Punk Rock" episode... this was a regular daytime treat in my student days (alongside Ironside. I couldn't take Diagnosis: Murder seriously on any level). My favourites were the two bumbling detective mates if Quincy, constantly on the verge of fucking up yet another case. They made Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara look clued up.
ReplyDeleteI used to love Quincy as a kid and whenever they scheduled an episode primetime, which they seemed to do fairly regularly on Granada right up until the early 90s, we as a family always enjoyed watching them. By the end of the 90s though the BBC repeated it to death in the afternoon slot, rotating it with Diagnosis Murder, Petrocelli and Murder She Wrote, that it became a real bugbear. of mine. Have you seen the last episode where Quincy marries? He doesn't even have a first name! The registrar says 'do you, Quincy, take blah blah blah to be your lawful wedded wife?' haha!
ReplyDeleteDC - Indeed it is. Good spot. A shame he didn't do a version of the Pistols "Bodies" to win them over.
ReplyDeleteMark - Unfortunately not although that line would have cracked me up too !