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Remember "Unsolved Mysteries?" A New Free Doc Goes Behind The Series
The image that gets conjured whenever you hear the title "Unsolved Mysteries" is Robert Stack standing on a smoke-filled set, breathlessly intoning some dire crime or bizarre occurrence and promising to reveal the clues behind it.
"Unsolved Mysteries" ran on NBC from 1988-1997, jumped for a year to CBS, then continued on cable in the U.S. for another few years, before getting resurrected on Netflix.
Now Pluto TV, a free streaming service, has debuted a documentary on how the series came to be, and promises to reveal some of the inside mysteries behind Unsolved Mysteries. The one-hour doc went live on Thursday and will be exclusive to Pluto until Oct. 19th, when it becomes available on other streamers, including Tubi, the Roku Channel and Amazon Freeview. It explores the background of the show and its effects on reality TV.
Its producers and creators admit right off the top that they didn't know if it would be a hit, yet viewers came to embrace it on NBC. By the time the network jettisoned the show, it had become entrenched as a brand and just kept going elsewhere.
It does not yet appear to be available on Pluto in Canada, but if you're interested in stories about how TV series came to be, you can see it for free with a U.S. VPN here.
‘Unsolved Mysteries’ at 35: New Documentary Explores the History of the Iconic True-Crime Series
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Re: Remember "Unsolved Mysteries?" A New Free Doc Goes Behind The Series
I just finished watching this documentary and it was actually really good. They showed you a ton of behind-the-scenes moments, which were often quite compelling. But the best part, to me, was when they talked about the actors. Because they filmed on location, they were forced to hire either non-actors or small time theatre thespians for their recreations. And many of them were not that good.
But two stood out and became huge stars. Cheryl Hines, who wound up as Larry David's wife on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" among other shows, got her first part in an Unsolved Mysteries segment, which they showed in the special. But perhaps the best part came when they aired footage of an impossibly young and inexperienced Matthew McConaughey in perhaps his first on screen appearance, playing a murder victim.
Worth a watch if you were a fan of this long running show and can spare 60 minutes.
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