TV Review: Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Synopsis: The iconic series UNSOLVED MYSTERIES is back! Fusing signature elements from the original series with contemporary immersive, character-driven storytelling, the 12 new episodes are rooted in the experiences of ordinary people who have lived the unthinkable — from the trauma of a loved one’s unexplained disappearance or horrific death, to the shock of a bizarre paranormal encounter. Alongside detectives and journalists, family members offer clues, present theories, and identify suspects, hoping one viewer holds the key to solving the mystery. 

Review: Unsolved Mysteries was one of the originators of true crime television. Debuting in 1987 with hosts Raymond Burr, Karl Malden, and Robert Stack, Unsolved Mysteries showed multiple mysteries each week that perplexed viewers. For the majority of fourteen seasons, Stack introduced audiences to these cases accompanied by the iconic theme music. After his pasisng, the series was hosted by Virginia Madsen and Dennis Farina as it bounced between network and cable homes. Off the air since 2010, the series is back. Now on Netflix, the new Unsolved Mysteries still has the recognizable theme music but no longer is as distinguishable from all the other similar shows airing these days.

Gone are any hosts or narrators. Instead, each episode is presented in a standard documentary format using interviews, television footage, still photos, and documents shown on the screen. The finished product is definitely competently made but it also no longer has anything that tells you that you are watching Unsolved Mysteries rather than any other series. There is also a shift from multiple cases being presented in each episode to a single mystery taking the one hour running time. The six episodes made available for review absolutely feel like cases that the original series would have presented and they range from murder and suicides to stories more paranormal in nature.

Of the episodes I watched, the stories are absolutely the type of tales you would expect from Unsolved Mysteries. One includes a death that defies explanation, another includes a disappearance with conflicting witness accounts, another features an aristocrat with a dark secret, a possible hate crime and yet another centers on a possible UFO sighting. All of the stories are older investigations in which we see the parties involved years and sometimes decades after the event itself. This affords the filmmakers quite a bit of archival material to pad these episodes. What I did notice is that, unlike the original Unsolved Mysteries, these episodes are fairly light on reenactments. There are a lot of timelines and graphics put on screen to illustrate the interviews but very few scenes of actors potraying the involved victims and witnesses. Well, unless you count shots of hands and feet and back views of people walking away.

But, something is missing here and I don't just mean the solution to each mystery. By having each episode showcase one mystery, certain episodes drag and could clearly have been condensed into a half hour. I do appreciate that the range of these cases are not limited to just the United States as one episode is almost entirely subtitled as the events took place in Nantes, France. The global nature does mean there are a lot of possible mysteries to investigate that were never covered in the 200 episodes of the original show's run, but finding stories worthy of a full hour documentary is another situation altogether.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this revival of Unsolved Mysteries as the stories are engaging and intriguing, but there just isn't anything that sets it apart from the glut of true crime programming available. Netflix themselves have a library of docu-series that are engrossing, like Making a Murderer, that have a unique storytelling twist. What I remember fondly about Unsolved Mysteries was the quickly consumable short story format as well as the periodic case updates that shed light on the ongoing investigations featured in earlier episodes. Each of these self-contained episodes will fill an hour of your time and provide some conversation fodder, but beyond that there isn't much to this beyond the literal title.

The first six episodes of Unsolved Mysteries premieres July 1st on Netflix.

Netflix

GOOD

7