- #ROBERT STACK UNSOLVED MYSTERIES STREAM UPDATE#
- #ROBERT STACK UNSOLVED MYSTERIES STREAM SERIES#
- #ROBERT STACK UNSOLVED MYSTERIES STREAM TV#
The creative team ultimately decided to go without a host or narrator, partially an acknowledgment that it would be impossible to replace Stack, who died in 2003. So we like the idea of being able to do a deeper dive into these episodes,” Meurer says. “When we were doing the original episodes, it was challenging to take a very multidimensional mystery with lots of twists and turns and try and put it into 12 or 15 minutes. “It was always that combination of the mystery and the humanity that hooked me in and that was the combination above all that I wanted to protect in these new episodes.”īut bringing the show to viewers accustomed to cinematic, long-form documentary storytelling - especially on Netflix - meant major updates to the format.įor starters, each episode of the revival goes in-depth on just a single case. “I just remember the feeling that the show inspired, which was: creeped out, can’t look away,” recalls Levy, who discovered the show as a college student.
#ROBERT STACK UNSOLVED MYSTERIES STREAM UPDATE#
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. Lifetime aired original episodes freshened up with new segments, and a repackaged version of the show, hosted by Dennis Farina, also lasted several years on Spike. Ratings softened, and it was canceled, then revived by CBS, only to be canceled again.
The reenactments were not always high art, but they did help launch the career of at least one Oscar winner: In one of his first onscreen roles, Matthew McConaughey played a Texas man shot to death in front of his mother.įor the first half of its run on NBC, “Unsolved Mysteries” ranked in the top 20 shows on television. 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.
#ROBERT STACK UNSOLVED MYSTERIES STREAM SERIES#
“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. “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 schedule.
#ROBERT STACK UNSOLVED MYSTERIES STREAM TV#
She and Cosgrove were reality TV pioneers, producing documentaries about subjects such as gun violence and missing children for HBO and NBC.
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