I found this satirical writing about UM. I think it sums up how most of us feel about how the show went downhill in its later years.

http://www.insaneabode.com/Articles/mysteries.html

Comments??

Just contrast the Gayle Delano case and Jayson Williams? Tiajuana Mexico case. It's like you are watching a different show.

Well, the music changing was one thing, but the switch in film style and Stack's face looking weary all contributed. Oh, and the fact that Lifetime didn't seem to care as much about a murder as some legend. To them, it was about viewers, not solving cases.

My only complaint about the Lifetime years of Unsolved Mysteries is the lack of Wanted or Unexplained Death segments. Although I do not mind segments of Legends and Paranormal Phenomena, once in awhile I do like to see a segment about an unexplained murder.

I might get flack for this, but what the hell. Not that anybody would know for certain but IMO I think one reason Lifetime doesn't show as many missing/unexplained deaths is because more of the victims on the cases involve women as opposed to paranormal or legends which mostly aren't violent towards people.

The new "Lifetime" segments suck. There I said it, there is very little to anything redeeming about the garbage strung together in 2001/2002 and given an "Unsolved Mysteries" stamp on it and now broadcasted onto our televisions week in and week out. These edits do not represent what UM is to most of us which is a show that is not only entertaining and informative but makes you ponder a lot of the questions and people's plights that are put forth on the program. Evidence in this is how many posts have been devoted to such people as "The Baskins", "Tara Calico", "Angie Hammond", "Nyleen Kay Marshall", "Keri Lynn Nixon", "Tammy Leppert" and numerous others. We in many ways feel for these people and their families and wonder what has happened to them and want resolutions to the cases we identify with.

The "Lifetime" segments just don't pack that emotional punch for the most part. They aren't all that interesting, first off they are shorter with less attention paid to the story they are telling. Also they aren't very scary or eye catching either, you'll notice the stories they editted into the "Lifetime" broadcasts from previous seasons are ones that are either laughable (most of the "Unexplained" stuff) or interesting in a Ripley's Believe It Or Not way (such as "Walk ins", "Suddenly Psychic", "Reincarnation" etc.) - You won't see "Son Of Sam", "Tara Calico", "The Baskins", "Nyleen Kay Marshall" or many of the other cases mentioned above in these edits because THEY ARE DAMN SCARY!!! - The one exception is I think "Angela Hammond" has been featured in a re-edit but I think careful consideration was performed by "lifetime" on which cases to exclude from their edits and which to INCLUDE.

I think it's time to begin that email or snail mail letter campaign again people - I'm personally not even bothering to tape these "edits" - there is very little things of interest to me that come from these episodes and I'm sure most of you feel the same way.

Okay done now.

I'm not sure what bothers me more... the stupid segments or Lifetime skipping episodes all together and then mixing up others(taking 1 segment from 1 episode and putting it into another episode)(especially with older NBC episodes), it reeks havoc on trying to find out airdates.

The new "Lifetime" segments suck. There I said it, there is very little to anything redeeming about the garbage strung together in 2001/2002 and given an "Unsolved Mysteries" stamp on it and now broadcasted onto our televisions week in and week out. These edits do not represent what UM is to most of us which is a show that is not only entertaining and informative but makes you ponder a lot of the questions and people's plights that are put forth on the program. Evidence in this is how many posts have been devoted to such people as "The Baskins", "Tara Calico", "Angie Hammond", "Nyleen Kay Marshall", "Keri Lynn Nixon", "Tammy Leppert" and numerous others. We in many ways feel for these people and their families and wonder what has happened to them and want resolutions to the cases we identify with.

The "Lifetime" segments just don't pack that emotional punch for the most part. They aren't all that interesting, first off they are shorter with less attention paid to the story they are telling. Also they aren't very scary or eye catching either, you'll notice the stories they editted into the "Lifetime" broadcasts from previous seasons are ones that are either laughable (most of the "Unexplained" stuff) or interesting in a Ripley's Believe It Or Not way (such as "Walk ins", "Suddenly Psychic", "Reincarnation" etc.) - You won't see "Son Of Sam", "Tara Calico", "The Baskins", "Nyleen Kay Marshall" or many of the other cases mentioned above in these edits because THEY ARE DAMN SCARY!!! - The one exception is I think "Angela Hammond" has been featured in a re-edit but I think careful consideration was performed by "lifetime" on which cases to exclude from their edits and which to INCLUDE.

I think it's time to begin that email or snail mail letter campaign again people - I'm personally not even bothering to tape these "edits" - there is very little things of interest to me that come from these episodes and I'm sure most of you feel the same way.

Okay done now.

Excellent points, Dark Dante, and I agree with you 100%!!

Excellent points, Dark Dante, and I agree with you 100%!!


Ditto :D

I've said it before - the early seasons on NBC were all about ATMOSPHERE. The Lifetime episodes were almost totally bereft of that. They couldn't make their segments have that one intangible that made us remember them forever, like so many of the cases from the early seasons.

I *will* give them an E for effort though. Unlike the CBS seasons and the last season on NBC, for the most part, they did make an effort to capture criminals. I was the one that made the list of cases shown in 2001/2 that were on AMW as well. When I was finished I had a list of at least 30 cases. But gone were all the elements that made the show so cool, and like I said before, they started disappearing while the show was still on NBC. For that, I will say that I liked the Lifetime seasons better than any of the seasons between 1996 and 1999. However, count me in on thinking that some of their 'flashback' selections from past shows were just dumb. They left a lot of old cases that still are important to some to just sit and rot.

Well, when NBC made the show, (The following is what I presume) they were trying to make it as scary as possible so that the names, faces, and crimes would stay in the watcher's head. That way, when they see a murderer buying some baby powder at a local store, they can do something about it, instead of contemplating and trying to remember what the guy looks like.

I guarantee you that if UM was not as blatently scary as it was, the number of solved cases would go down, if not dramatically.

So, it worked and things happened. So, the show is dead and Lifetime decides to make new episodes. They didn't make them so that they could catch many people. They were making them to appease a fanbase and show off unexplained things. If they really intended to catch anyone, they would have used more scare tactics. The show took a modern turn and it just sunk because it was more focused on drawing in people they knew would watch regardless of how it was instead of solving the mysteries. Robert Stack was probably feeling down and ill during the entire process, but he still wanted to do something he thought was right.

Sadly, the result is an un-scary show with forgettable cases.

I couldn't agree more with you when comparing the NBC years to the LIFETIME years.

I think another thing that made the NBC years so much better is the writers/producers went into more detail with different creative ways of portraying the segments - this was mentioned on the commentary in the "Bizarre Murders" DVD set. For instance, in the Dennis Depue segment, they could have had the story start out with the early years with the Depue family throwing the football in the yard and going in time with the events that happened leading up to Marylin's death. Instead, they chose to grab the attention and curiousity of the audience right away by showing the couple driving down the country road witnessing Dennis bury that bloody blanet in the school yard. :eek: Nice touch.

I agree with Composite Sketch. So many of those segments from the NBC years got implanted in my head forever after the first time I saw them - especially the Baskins/Maples, Cindy James, Angela Hammond, Nyleen Kay Marshall, William Bradford Bishop, Charles Morgan, Tracey Kirkpatrick and the woman shot in the face through her car window.

Only one segment from the "Lifetime years" had a deep effect on me - The Jesse James Hollywood segment which was such a tragic story despite the fact that it wasn't portrayed as interesting as the NBC segments.

Well here's some differences between NBC & Lifetime..

1. Shooting shows on film was the standard back in those days, I don't even think things were shot digitally then.

2. Lifetime didn't have the budget that NBC had.

3. Better detail were put in the segments back then because you had better writers and researchers.

4. Lifetime is "Television For Woman" so much of the newer segments produced by Lifetime are mild in tone, more softer themed segments, such as unexplained phenomena, psychics, legends, etc.

Just a few but the above pretty much explain the major differences. Obviously the difference between celluloid types is the cause of the lack of a creep atmosphere but even if Lifetime shot the show this way I still don't think it would have really made a difference to most fans because they would still show softer themed segments.

1. Shooting shows on film was the standard back in those days, I don't even think things were shot digitally then.
thats what pretty much happened to music video's.they use to be dreamy,and or gritty.now their all bright and shiny.

I don't think anyone has ever mentioned this before but it seems to me that the "family members and police officals" were more involved in recreating the events in the older episodes. After about 1994 or so UM seemed to use more actors to film the stories. I don't know about you guys but I enjoyed seeing the actual family and friend...it gave the show more realism and drama.

I'm gonna get the Canadian channel "Mystery", which shows UM twice a day (or so). I dunno if it is syndicated from Lifetime or not, since it is a channel re:mysteries and crimes it might show some murders, unexplained deaths and some paranormal. I'll have to see in a few days, when I'll have the Illico machine.