The first and second seasons of Jack Klugman’s NBC series, “Quincy, M.E.,” about a crime-solving, sleuthing medical examiner is now out on DVD.

“Do me a favor,” a veteran homicide detective barks at medical examiner Quincy in an early episode of this late-’70s mystery series. “Stop playing detective. You’re a doctor, OK?”

But did Quincy (like Columbo, his other name was never uttered) heed the detective’s advice? Heck no. Quincy’s obstinate refusal to butt out and leave the crime-solving to the cops was practically the show’s hook. “M.E.” could just as easily have stood for “meddling examiner.”

Universal Classic Television is marking “Quincy” as the forerunner of the current forensic-detection boom embodied by the various “CSI” franchises. It’s a valid tout. “Quincy” had real medical examiners advising on procedure, and it may have been the first prime-time series in which evidence-gatherers wore plastic gloves. It also focuses on wounds and contusions more graphically than its crime-solving contemporaries, such as “Magnum, P.I.”

What’s startling, in retrospect, is how discreet it is in its handling of corpses compared to all of today’s aggressively gruesome forensic dramas. In one sequence, Quincy introduces a gaggle of recent police academy graduates to the finer points of autopsy. The emphasis, played for comedy, is on the rookies’ reactions. Some run gagging from the lab. A few faint. Not a single incision is shown.

The series has above-average production values for its time, and its plots are more involved than those of most crime series in the pre-“Hill Street Blues” era, occasionally pitting Quincy not only against his bosses and the police but against Los Angeles County’s larger political establishment. And Quincy’s relationships with women are surprisingly adult – chaste by today’s standards, but leaving no doubt that they were more than enjoying long walks on the beach.

The element that increasingly grates the more episodes you screen is Quincy himself. While Klugman in lighter moments recalls his gruffly amusing work as Oscar Madison in “The Odd Couple,” he and the writers also gave Quincy a tiresome self-righteous streak. Every episode has declarations such as, “My work is my life. Now, either I do it right or I’ll give it up for good.”

His bosses found him a royal pain, and sometimes you can’t help but admit they had a point.