Though far from all of these are available to stream online, hundreds of episodes of Unsolved Mysteries in its Robert Stack-hosted incarnation can be found available to watch online for free.
Online streamer Pluto TV, for example, has an entire channel that plays nothing but Unsolved Mysteries 24 hours a day, seven days a week, meaning that true crime fans can dip in and out of episodes from across the years. However, users can only watch the episode currently playing on the channel.
The SpikeTV version of the show, which ran from 2008 to 2010 and saw Dennis Farina take the place of Stack, seems to currently only be available on Tubi, where it is listed separately from the Stack episodes as Unsolved Mysteries with Dennis Farina.
For viewers who have never seen the original Unsolved Mysteries, there are some noticeable differences between the original show and the new Netflix version. The original, for example, has a host, who introduced each of the multiple mysteries within a single episode. The Netflix version, in contrast, has no host and only one case per episode. Both, however, keep the eerie theme tune.
The original also had more of a focus on dramatic re-enactments, and occasionally you see a famous face pop up—Unsolved Mysteries Season 5, for example, features an appearance from a young Matthew McConoughey, a year before his breakout role in the movie Dazed and Confused.
Speaking of the differences, show co-creator Terry Dunn Meurer told Collider: “I think we wanted to freshen the series and do a deeper dive into the stories. We wanted to let the people whose mysteries these are tell more of their stories. It was a tough decision to not have a host. We missed Bob Stack and the gravitas that he brought to the series so tremendously. But we just decided it would be very hard to fill his shoes.”
Viewers, however, might notice a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from Stack in the Netflix version: “Oh yes, there’s a kind of ghostly image of him during the titles. We couldn’t not pay our respects to Bob. He’s just as iconic as the theme.”
