Unsolved Mysteries first premiered in 1987 with Robert Stack as host and is currently enjoying its fourth reboot with a new Netflix season premiering next week. People who love Unsolved Mysteries really fucking love its stories the paranormal, true crime tales, and even the cheesy reenactments. Why? The key is that the mysteries are… unsolved, according to series co-creator Terry Dunn Meurer. From an interview in Gizmodo:
In 2020, we also talked about how you see the show as more of a "mystery" series than "true crime," though that's how it usually gets categorized. In 2022, true crime is more popular than ever before, with more ways to consume it than ever before. What makes Unsolved Mysteries continue to stand out in that landscape?
Dunn Meurer: Personally, I think it's because the cases are unsolved and there's a lot to talk about when you get to the end of the episode. It's not a case that's already been adjudicated. And sometimes a lot of the crime programing that comes around, it's higher-profile cases that we've already seen. We tend to do lesser-known cases—actually that's part of the criteria, not doing cases that have already been in the headlines and they're being done in a multi-part series or something. We like to give exposure to to the other cases—so these are cases that the audience hasn't seen. I think that makes a difference.
