Look Out! Quincy’s On The Warpath!

Judging by the amount of time it's on the telly over here, Quincy could probably buy himself a bejewelled sex unicorn with repeat royalties from his show.

Trouble is, though, Quincy says he can't even afford a bejewelled sex gerbil, which he's why he's suing NBC.

Hard-bitten, authority-disrespecting, super-sleuthing coroner Quincy - who was the star of a hard-hitting documentary series for seven years - claims that NBC has been gypping him out of money. Money that he wants. However, Quincy is now 85 years old and might not be thinking straight, because he's also claiming that Quincy wasn't a documentary and that his real name is Jack Klugman. Quincy's name isn't Jack Klugman! Quincy's name is Quincy! Quincy!

Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the world of forensic medical examining was boring. People would die by accident and they'd be buried in the ground within an hour. Then came Quincy, who revolutionised the profession forever on three fronts.

Instead of blithely accepting deaths as accidental, Quincy routinely a) discovered that most deaths were caused by murder, b) argued with his superiors who disagreed with him even though Quincy was always right with every single dead body he was ever given for seven years straight and c) showed mangled-up dead bodies to policemen until they threw up or fainted.

That's standard practise amongst coroners these days, but Quincy was a trend-setter. And when he allowed NBC to film him solving 148 cases in a row from 1976 to 1983, Quincy signed a contract that promised him 25% of net profits from the show. And here's the problem. Quincy, who's bizarrely started to believe that he's an 85-year-old actor called Jack Klugman who also starred in 12 Angry Men and two episodes of Diagnosis Murder, claims that NBC owes him money.

The New York Times reports on Jack Klugman's quest for Quincy's millions:

Mr. Klugman said his 1976 contract with NBC entitled him and his company, Sweater Productions, to 25 percent of the net profits of “Quincy,” which ran from 1976 to 1983 and was rerun afterward. “I recently heard that they made $250 million, and it’s still on TV in Germany,” said Mr. Klugman, 85. “I don’t want their money. I want my money. I worked my tail off. I got up at 4 in the morning and stayed at the studio. I did rewrite. I edited.” He said that his copy of the contract was lost when his agent died and that NBC refused to provide a copy. According to the lawsuit, NBC provided Mr. Klugman with an accounting statement showing that the series lost $66 million through 2006.

There's a bit of a difference between $250 million and $minus66 million, and perhaps this lawsuit will get to the bottom of it. After all, Quincy needs to stand up for his 1970s/1980s procedural colleagues here. If NBC has been screwing him out of money, then what about Columbo? Or the singing teapot from Murder She Wrote? Or Ironside! Won't somebody think of Ironside! His legs don't even work properly!

Actually we're leading you on a little here - in all honesty we don't think that Quincy needs to sue NBC at all. We've seen the opening titles to Quincy and it's clear that he's easily rich enough to lounge around on big yachts with blonde bikini-clad temptresses. That's enough money for anyone, surely.

To prove our point, here are the opening titles to Quincy with some newly-uncovered lyrics, aka the best thing on the internet at the moment…

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Klugman Sues Over ‘Quincy’ - New York Times