Most episodes involve Detective Sloan getting involved in a murder investigation and asking his father for help as a consultant. The dead body is quickly determined to be a murder victim and Dr. Sloan must use the medical evidence around the body to figure out who has committed the crime. If it isn't exactly some piece of evidence on the body itself, Dr. Sloan or his staff will notice symptoms from the various suspects (like rashes or injuries) that could eliminate or implicate them as possible murderers.
Unlike similar series, Diagnosis Murder isn't really an overarching story. Each episode is pretty self-contained and can, for the most part be watched in any order. There is a two-part episode, "Murder on the Run," where a wrongfully convicted man has escaped and uses Dr. Sloan as a hostage while they try to find out who actually committed the murder. Something I found interesting about this episode is that it guest starred Denise Crosby who, at the time, just left Star Trek: The Next Generation as Lt. Tasha Yar (as a side bit of trivia, Denise is the granddaughter of Bing Crosby).
Other episodes of note include "Love is Murder" where Steve falls in love with a serial cop killer or "Misdiagnosis Murder" where Jesse, one of Mark's staff members, sees a person have a heart attack and die in the hospital garage, but the person that gets admitted is seemingly fine, not the person he saw and definitely not dead. In "Living on the Streets Can Be Murder," Dr. Sloan goes undercover as a homeless person to figure out why the visitors of a free clinic have started showing up dead and without livers.
It is pretty evident that Diagnosis Murder really helped to kick off, or at least make an example for, more recent medical mystery shows like CSI or Bones where the medical professionals have to use their scientific skills alongside the police in order to catch the criminal. And for that reason, if nothing else, it should be at least considered by fans of that genre since it helps to show how this type of TV series has evolved over the years.
