That’s why if you watch the old episodes, some of reenactments are stronger than others,” Meurer says. “Oftentimes we were in small towns and we’d go to local theaters to try to find talent to be in the reenactments. Crews would travel across the country to interview witnesses and survivors, then film re-creations using local performers. Unusual for the era, “Unsolved Mysteries” was shot nearly entirely on location. “Sometimes an arrest would be made right away and our goal was always to get to the update information to the viewers as quickly as possible.” Then there were the updates, which “were always a scramble,” Meurer says. And the show helped resolve dozens of cases over the years, beginning with the arrest of Robert Weeks, a fugitive in Arizona whose story was featured in the second episode.Ĭosgrove/Meurer Productions cranked out 22 or more episodes a year, each of which featured four or five cases, for roughly 100 mysteries a year. If you aren’t interested in the missing-person case, you sit through 10 minutes and then you get to the UFO.”īut there also was an emphasis on solvable crimes, she says. “The beauty of the franchise is that there’s something for everyone. “We’ve always thought of it as a mystery series rather than a true-crime series,” she says. Meurer and Cosgrove always set out to cover a wide array of stories. Filmed in shadowy alleys and abandoned buildings and clad in a trench coat, the actor introduced and narrated each story, somehow making even the most benign details seem ominous. After playing crime fighter Eliot Ness in “The Untouchables,” Stack “gave the series that gravitas,” Meurer says. That’s one of the reasons that the audience tuned in: Oh, I wonder wonder what happened in that case?”Įventually the show got a regular time slot, and Stack became the permanent host. It was very exciting that we were solving cases at the rate that we were. “Then we started to solve cases and we realized we can create endings for these cases. Meurer had initially worried that audiences would be frustrated by so many incomplete stories. Stylistically, the reboot - executive produced by Shawn Levy - shares as much DNA with “ The Jinx” or “ Making a Murderer” as the original “Unsolved Mysteries.” Each episode focuses on a single subject, allowing for a greater level of detail and nuance. The spooky theme song is back in a new arrangement, and the franchise has likewise been retooled to suit contemporary tastes: there’s no host, no narration and no more literal reenactments. Six new episodes of “Unsolved Mysteries” premiered Wednesday on Netflix, and another batch is slated for later this year. Now, like so many other nostalgia-steeped properties from the 1990s, it’s being revived for the streaming era. Sometimes corny, often terrifying, “ Unsolved Mysteries” left a mark on pop culture. Hosted by the leathery-voiced Robert Stack and featuring one of the eeriest theme songs in TV history, the long-running reality show scared the bejesus out of a generation with stories about brutal murders and baffling disappearances, yeti sightings and alien abductions, medical mysteries and long-lost loves.Īiring for nine seasons on NBC and later moving to CBS and Lifetime, the program was both well ahead of its time - inviting audiences to “help solve a mystery” as they would later via countless Reddit discussions and hit podcasts - and firmly of it - with dated reenactments and low-fi special effects. If you were a child in the ’80s or ‘90s - and maybe even if you were an adult - you probably lost a few nights’ sleep to “Unsolved Mysteries.”
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