‘Unsolved mysteries’ on Netflix scares a new generation

If you were a kid in the 80s or 90s, and maybe even if you were an adult, you probably lost a few nights of sleep in “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Presented by leathery-voiced Robert Stack, and featuring one of the creepiest themed songs in television history, the full-length reality show spooked the bejesus of a generation with stories of brutal murders and baffling disappearances, yeti sightings and alien abductions, medical mysteries, and long-lost loves.

Broadcast for nine seasons on NBC and then moving to CBS and Lifetime, the show was ahead of its time, inviting audiences to “help solve a mystery” as they would later through countless Reddit debates and successful podcasts, and firmly. with old-fashioned recreations and low-fidelity special effects. Sometimes cheesy, often scary, “Unsolved Mysteries” left a mark on pop culture.

Now, like so many other nostalgic properties from the 1990s, it is being revived for the broadcast age. Six new episodes of “Unsolved Mysteries” premiered on Netflix Wednesday, and another batch is slated for later this year.

The creepy scary theme is back in a new arrangement, and the franchise has also been tweaked to suit contemporary tastes – no host, no narration, and no more literal representations. Each episode focuses on a single theme, allowing for a higher level of detail and nuance. Stylistically, the reboot – executive produced by Shawn Levy – shares as much DNA with “The Jinx” or “Making a Murderer” as the original “Unsolved Mysteries”.

A scene from “Unsolved Mysteries” that airs on Netflix.

(Netflix)

“I have an idea of ​​how we could captivate today’s young viewer, and that’s where our ambitions for this show lie: satisfy fans of the original and indoctrinate people who come to this without a story,” says Levy, comparing it to his Netflix’s hit “Stranger Things” in its intergenerational appeal.

Executive producer Terry Meurer says that she and fellow co-creator John Cosgrove have wanted to bring back “Unsolved Mysteries” since they stopped producing new material in the early 2000s.. And she says that right now, at a time when the Internet has empowered amateur detectives, it is the ideal time for it.

“The fervent armchair detectives really like to dig into the details of these cases, and I think after watching each episode they will go to Google. People are sophisticated, they crave more information and they want longer stories. “

She and Cosgrove pioneered reality shows and produced documentaries on topics like gun violence and missing children for HBO and NBC. “Unsolved Mysteries” began airing in 1987 as a series of specials, hosted by Raymond Burr, Karl Malden, and then Stack, which NBC used to plug holes in its agenda.

At first, Meurer was concerned that the public would be frustrated by so many incomplete stories. “Then we started solving cases and realized that we can create endings for these cases. It was very exciting that we resolved the cases at the rate we were. That’s one of the reasons the audience tuned in: Oh, I wonder what happened in that case?

Eventually, the show had a regular schedule, and Stack became the permanent host. After playing crime fighter Eliot Ness in “The Untouchables,” Stack “gave the series that seriousness,” says Meurer. Filmed in dark alleys and abandoned buildings and dressed in a raincoat, the actor presented and narrated each story, making even the most benign details seem ominous.

Meurer and Cosgrove always set out to cover a wide range of stories. “We have always viewed it as a mystery series rather than a series of true crimes,” she says. “The beauty of the franchise is that there is something for everyone. If she is not interested in the missing person’s case, she sits for 10 minutes and then reaches the UFO. “

Alonzo Brooks’ mysterious death is investigated in Netflix’s revival of “Unsolved Mysteries.”

(Netflix)

But there was also an emphasis on crimes that can be solved, she says. And the show helped resolve dozens of cases over the years, beginning with the arrest of Robert Weeks, an Arizona fugitive whose story appeared in the second episode.

Cosgrove / Meurer Productions produced 22 or more episodes a year, each with four to five cases, for approximately 100 mysteries a year. Then there were the updates, which “were always a stir,” says Meurer. “Sometimes an arrest was made immediately and our goal was always to get up-to-date information to viewers as quickly as possible.”

Unusual for the time, “Unsolved Mysteries” was filmed almost entirely on location. The teams would travel across the country to interview witnesses and survivors, then film re-enactments with local artists.

“Many times we were in small towns and went to local theaters to try to find talent for the performances. That’s why if you watch the previous episodes, some of the recreations are stronger than others, “says Meurer. The performances weren’t always high-art, but they helped launch the career of at least one Oscar winner: in one of In his first on-screen roles, Matthew McConaughey played a Texas man shot dead in front of his mother.

During the first half of his NBC career, “Unsolved Mysteries” was ranked in the Top 20 television shows. Ratings were softened and it was canceled, then revived by CBS, only to be canceled again. The original episodes streamed for life were renewed with new segments, and a repackaged version of the show, presented by Dennis Farina, also lasted for several years on Spike. Eventually, “We decided the brand needed to take a break,” says Meurer, whose company continued to maintain a database of thousands of cases and update a dozen or more stories a year.

“I just remember the feeling that the show inspired, which was: scared, I can’t look the other way,” recalls Levy, who discovered the show as a college student. “It was always that combination of mystery and humanity that hooked me and that was the combination, above all, that I wanted to protect in these new episodes.”

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès and his son on vacation before the family tragedy appeared in an episode of the Netflix revival of “Unsolved Mysteries”.

(Netflix)

But bringing the show to viewers accustomed to long-running, cinematic documentary storytelling, especially on Netflix, meant major updates to the format.

For starters, each episode of the revival delves into a single case. “When we were doing the original episodes, it was challenging to take a very multi-dimensional mystery with lots of twists and turns and try to put it in 12 or 15 minutes. So we like the idea of ​​being able to dig deeper into these episodes, ”says Meurer.

The creative team finally decided to go without a host or narrator, in part an acknowledgment that it would be impossible to replace Stack, who died in 2003. “It is very difficult to fill Robert Stack’s shoes,” says Meurer. “But we also wanted to give [our subjects] more opportunities to tell their own stories and to be the biggest characters in the episodes. “

The recreations are still here, but now they’re visceral, impressionistic, and less literal, says Marcus A. Clarke, who directed three of the six episodes. In the original series, a witness might recall going up and knocking on a door, and the recreation would demonstrate exactly that. Now Clarke says, “You see your feet walking towards the door, and the crack under the door and a little bit of dust falls. It forces viewers to think about what is really happening and how the images they are seeing relate to the story, rather than spoon-feed them the same thing they are hearing. We do not “see-tell”.

Aesthetically, the revival may be quite different from the original, but viewers are likely to feel just as restless as in the Stack days. Levy attributes it to what he describes as Meurer’s finely calibrated “spectrometer”. “His instincts on when to dial the creepy factor” are excellent, he says.

A scene from “Unsolved Mysteries” that airs on Netflix.

(Netflix)

The show still explores mysteries beyond killings and disappearances, yes there is a UFO episode, but some of the show’s original categories no longer make sense in the digital age. (These days, people looking for long-lost relatives or loved ones can turn to Facebook or ancestry.com.)

The producers also made a concerted effort to find cases that would be attractive to Netflix’s global audience and could be resolved by it.

“It’s a more diverse set of stories, geographic, racial, and especially tonal,” says Levy.

“House of Terror” tells the story of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, a French man from an aristocratic family who disappeared after the murder of his wife and four children. “Mystery on the Rooftop” examines the suspicious case of Rey Rivera, who jumped, or was pushed, to death from the roof of a historic Baltimore hotel.

The timely episode “No Ride Home” delves into a possible hate crime involving Alonzo Brooks, a black man who disappeared from a party in rural Kansas in 2004. His body was found on the property, which the police had wanted, a month later. The FBI recently reopened the case, offering a $ 100,000 reward for information.

Like many others, Clarke, who spent several tense weeks on location in Kansas filming the episode, said that he believes race was a factor in Brooks’ death. “It is just a story of many African Americans who have been caught up in systematic racism,” he says.

The creative team behind the renaissance is confident that Netflix’s international reach (183 million subscribers and counting) and the ease of sharing information in the era of social media will bring resolution to some of these cases.

“I want this show to be entertaining,” says Levy, “but all viewers in the world would not be as rewarding as a solved mystery.”