Unsolved Mysteries: Full Season

July 3, 2020 4:57 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

Immersive, character-driven stories are rooted in the experiences of ordinary people who have lived the unthinkable. Families, detectives and journalists hope viewers hold the clues to solving these mysteries. (IMDB, 2020)
posted by Countess Elena (7 comments total)

Some fans of the older show are complaining that this version is too generic because it has no host and no alleyway with dry ice smoke. Fair enough, but I like this better because it allows the stories to take center stage with all their own dignity.

The problem with some of them -- if you can call it a problem -- is that the mystery is not too damned mysterious. What kind of man would carry on that Carl von Cosel bullshit with his wife's bones? I ask you. And where is Sandy Klemp? And poor Alonzo Brooks --

As for Comte Xavier, his story reminded me of Lord Lucan, and it seems to me to have the same prosaic end. He doesn't seem to have had the connections, the cash, or the sense to completely disappear in today's world. But are there as many terrifying ways to die and be consumed in the French backcountry as in the American? Even so, there was the ocean.

I don't know what to think about the Great Barrington UFO. I really wish I had heard about it before I visited the town last year. The Berkshires can be mighty spooky at night.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:13 PM on July 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

Hah, my wife watched a few of these, and then wanted to watch the old ones, which are on Hulu. She pulled me over to see this moment from the intro.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:59 PM on July 3, 2020

I couldn’t stop laughing at the Robert Stack homage in the intro (kids today: “is that Abe Lincoln?”). Somehow they kept the music but toned it down a little so it didn’t strike bloodcurdling fear in my heart. I enjoy watching these, although I was waiting for an episode like one of the cheesy ghost stories they used to feature (“I saw the ghost of a small girl bouncing a ball in the corner of a hotel hallway!”). Thankfully it looks like we get a UFO story...
posted by sallybrown at 4:47 AM on July 4, 2020

Wow, was it ever jarring to go from the heartwrenching episode about Alonzo Brooks’s murder to the goofy UFO episode.
posted by sallybrown at 3:42 PM on July 4, 2020 [4 favorites]

The guy in the second story KISSING HIS MURDERED WIFE'S SKULL also patting her ashes THAT HE SLEEPS NEXT TO. Also the whole treatment of her kid.
posted by emjaybee at 8:29 PM on July 4, 2020 [8 favorites]

I enjoyed these! I think they would have been better as shorter versions of these stories packaged into a couple of episodes, but cynically speaking, I don’t think the economics of doing 3-5 original stories per episode, with interview subjects all over the country (or the world) would pencil out anymore.
posted by Automocar at 6:30 PM on July 5, 2020

I just watched the Alonzo Brooks heartbreaking freaking story and I'm so glad the FBI reopened the case. Fingers crossed so hard that someone with a conscience comes forward because somebody knows something.
posted by Bacon Bit at 11:01 AM on July 6, 2020 [4 favorites]