Unsolved Mysteries was made in the opposite style. Its episodes spooled through schlocky reenactments done by actors (including Matthew McConaughey, in his first credited screen role), extracting maximum drama from minimal fact. One segment, building on the eras Satanic Panic, argued that a teenage boys suicide was a Dungeons and Dragonsbased murder plot. By the time home footage became a part of TVs language (Candid Camera, etc.), those who might have watched Unsolved Mysteries were switching to fiction: The X Files scooped up the UFO-enthusiast market as soon as it aired in 1993, and helped mold anti-government conspiracy speculation into its own entertainment genre. Unsolved Mysteriesa show that despite its fantastical mix of genres saw 260 of its featured cases later resolved, sometimes through viewer tips, according to The New York Timessimply didnt feel novel anymore.

Elsewhere on television, a new genre with a different and more compelling spin on blurring fact and fiction would soon undercut the whole mystery genre: reality TV. From Judge Judy to 1992s smash hit The Real World, American entertainment in the 1990s took all that was most engaging about mystery documentary shows (real personalities, real stakes, a constant revolving door of content) and made it personal. Where shows like Unsolved Mysteries or Forensic Files had run on a strange mix of voyeurism and altruism, with the viewer at home playing star witness, reality television would run on voyeurism alonewhile proving easier and less expensive to make than documentaries.

The rise of true crime in recent years makes a lot of sense when you consider how fragmented American nonfiction television programming had become by the end of the 2010s. In 2009, for example, when recession and the prospect of perpetual war were rocking the United States, viewers looking for real life content were offered bafflingly stylized, even surreal shows like Cops, Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, and Toddlers and Tiaras. Quality documentary television was rare.

The decades-long progression from reenactments to amateur video footage and reality TV is, in part, a history of what makes on-screen events seem true in U.S. television. But its also, in Netflixs hands, data for an ever-churning algorithma way of predicting the next success. The new Unsolved Mysteries feels precision-engineered for a 2020 audiencelong-form, detailed, and bingeablebut devoid of all the flair and atmosphere that made the original seem untrue and yet interesting to watch.

Now there is no presenter or voiceover, and each hourlong episode focuses on a single, reality-style mystery; more like the chilling, unbelievable truth of The Jinx than the swirling dry ice of The X Files. Of six episodes, five revolve around people whose mysterious deaths were never solved, and one is about a UFO sighting. We meet the families of murder victims, see photos of their lost beloveds, and in one case hear what its like to discover your own brothers body rotting in a rural ditch.

Shawn Levy, who made Arrival, Night at the Museum, and Stranger Thingsalso for Netflix, and also rooted in the genre we could call 1980s paranormalis the shows executive producer. In press notes distributed by Netflix, he wrote that his new program is very loyal to the things we all love about the [Unsolved Mysteries] brand, citing its blend of supernatural with criminal topics and his retention of the old theme tune.

This reference to the shows brand reveals something hollow at the core of the reboot, a kind of cynical nostalgia out of sync with todays sensibilities. The final episode, Missing Witness, for example, is about a young girl whose mother almost certainly killed her. The dead girls sister says to the camera that she will devote her life to bringing her mother to justice. The previous episode was all about a group of people who claim, without much evidence, to have seen an enormous unidentified aircraft in September 1961. That contrastbetween a murdered child and a spaceshipfeels much more jarring than similar contrasts in the original show, in part because this shows new framing is otherwise very serious and intimate. The shows chemistryits balance of light and dark, schlock and the human heartis just plain strange, as if some robot at Netflix HQ were commissioned to create the most engaging possible TV show but had his empathy screw left loose.

Being unable to choose one documentary approach and stick with it, the new Unsolved Mysteries turns out to be a curiously soulless product that will leave viewers suspecting that one of their basest instincts (voyeurism) has been exploited in the name of one of their noblest (the desire to solve crimes, after all, is also an instinct toward justice). Theres nothing more ethical or truthful about this show compared to its predecessorits production is simply truthier in style. Were all smarter, more suspicious consumers of true crime than we were five years ago; we know now that DNA testing is a highly politicized technology, for example, and that Netflix will happily play fast and loose with the facts if it rakes in more viewers. In todays world, where cold case files are more likely to lead to a conversation critiquing the criminal justice system than a tangent on alien abductions, Unsolved Mysteries smacks of yesterdays news.

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Unsolved Mysteries Is a Story of American Television's Evolution - The New Republic