There are few true crime shows that are as well-known and fondly remembered as Unsolved Mysteries, the long-running docuseries diving into all kinds of cases ranging from missing persons and lost love to the supernatural and UFOs. Over the course of the past 35 years, the show, which was famously hosted and narrated by the late Robert Stack, has given viewers some of the most incredible TV moments and one of the most terrifying opening title sequences. Now, its co-creator is looking back on the early days, and she opened up about how she knew the series would be “powerful.”
In an interview with CinemaBlend ahead of the release of Unsolved Mysteries: Behind the Legacy, a new documentary exploring the history and lasting impact of the show, series co-creator Terry Dunn Meurer opened up about the moment she knew this was going to be something powerful, stating:
In the first episode of Season 1, one of the cases got solved, and we were like, ‘Oh wow, this is powerful, we can really use this in a powerful way.’ And then more cases got solved and more cases got solved.
At the time of the show’s debut as a handful of specials in 1987 (before it became the full-fledged series we remember with Robert Stack’s involvement), the internet wasn’t an option for viewers to use in hopes of learning more about the various cases. Meurer thinks this helped the show become so impactful and successful during its early days. She told me:
So people would tune in to see the new information or the update. So I think that was one of the things that made it successful overall.
The topic of updating old cases came up several times in the conversation, and at one point Meurer broke down the process of how the producers continue to go back to old episodes today to provide updates for solved cases and other status changes. For the most part, this is as simple as adding a card at the end of an episode just so that the audience knows that a case has been closed:
That feels like our responsibility, so we’ll be doing that forever.
A great number of the cases covered on Unsolved Mysteries have been solved over the years, Meurer revealed, amounting to somewhere around 260 stories at this point. She pointed out that while not every single one of these cases has been solved because of the show (she used the case of the Golden State Killer as an example), viewer participation has contributed to that number.
Several of these high-profile cases are discussed in the Unsolved Mysteries: Behind the Legacy documentary, as are other fascinating aspects of the long-running series. There’s even a portion focusing on how the show helped launch the careers of actors like Cheryl Hines, David Ramsey, and Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey.
Unsolved Mysteries: Behind the Legacy is currently streaming on Pluto TV, and it will expand to various other free platforms like Freevee, Tubi, the Roku Channel, and the FilmRise app starting Thursday, October 19, 2023. And while we don’t yet know when new episodes of Unsolved Mysteries will become available with a Netflix subscription, there are still plenty of promising shows on the 2023 TV schedule.