TV Review #10: Unsolved Mysteries (1987 - 2002)

It's finally time for us to discuss quite possibly the best show involving True Crime, that is Unsolved Mysteries. Totally beats the pants off America's Most Wanted, American Justice, Cold Case Files, That one show I can't remember that had the black guy from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. You know the guy, Khan puts that weird worm thing in his ear and he freaks out. Yeah, he had his own true crime show. Came on A&E along side American Justice and Cold Case Files. Was pretty good. He did a good job narrating it. I haven't seen much Star Trek but Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was pretty good.

Enough about Star Trek or other lesser true crime shows. We are talking about the real deal here son. In the 1980s there were 3 specials called Missing... Have You Seen This Person? They starred the mom from Family Ties. They were definitely a precursor to Unsolved Mysteries and it's kinda sad that they are considered lost media these days. Someone has to have them on some dusty old VHS tape from the mid 1980s. After those 3 specials came several Unsolved Mysteries specials. These specials starred Raymond Burr, Karl Malden and for the last four Robert Stack.  He couldn't take off his trench coat because if he did the universe would explode. Thanks for saving us Bobby Stack! We weren't read to see the cosmic horrors within the trench coat.

Finally on October 5th, 1988 the specials became a full series. I'm pretty sure I didn't start watching until sometime in the 1990s but man I watched the damn ass hell out of this show. This was great stuff to watch to SCARE THE HELL out of you. I don't know how they did it but this show literally still kinda gives me goosebumps, and I've watched like 32 trillion horror films. It was also really incredibly popular. I remember Dinosaurs, the TGIF show made fun of it. That sticks in my mind a lot. A dinosaur in Bobby Stack's trench coat. I wonder if Bobby Stack liked people calling him Bobby?

It lasted on NBC until 1997, then CBS took it for a year. Then it was off until 2001 till Lifetime Television for Women took it on. I'm pretty sure I watched up until NBC took it off. The only time I really remember watching CBS was to see the short lived CBS Block Party that had Family Matters and Step by Step on it for their last seasons. They also made a remake series on Spike TV which was just cut up footage form the original show with new host segments from Dennis Farina. That guy was a decent enough actor but man he didn't have what it took to host this show. The entire show just didn't have the same feel of the series and you could easily watch most of the wanted cases on YouTube.

Although the show definitely works better as a whole. I don't remember many people uploading Treasure segments or the Alien, ghost stuff (apparently Bobby Stack would make fun of the alien and ghost stuff on set) or Lost Loves. It was just the Wanted and Murder cases. Which yeah was the big part of the show but I think it works better as a whole big grab bag of stuff. The Alien and ghost stuff was always fun and it's always nice to see people get reunited. I think the most interesting cases were of Eric Tamiyasu, Mary Morris and Rhonda Hinson. I'd like to see every case on this show end up getting solved but those are the three I'm most curious about. Also don't blame me if you end up going down some kind of insane rabbit hole when clicking on those links. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I don't know if the reboot on Netflix is any good. I'm sure I will end up talking about it sooner or later. I've heard some stuff about the cases and they seem like very interesting true crime cases, it's just they don't do the aliens, ghosts, lost loves or anything else. They are a part of Unsolved Mysteries and it feels weird to forget about them. At least thats what I think.

FINAL VERDICT: Unsolved Mysteries was a really great little show with a great vibe. It's all on YouTube and Amazon Prime and is totally worth a watch.  Never forget Robert Stack, he kept the cosmic horrors from destroying all of space and time and he did it for you and he did it for me. Never disrespect that.