Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I haven't watched Disappeared yet, but I have it lined up. I'll look into this Homicide Hunter as well. I'm always looking for new quality true crime shows.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I also like "Notorious" and "Aphrodite Jones True Crime"

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I haven't heard of "Notorious", but too many of Jones's cases are high-profile. I like hearing about cases that are unfamiliar to me, or at least ones that I don't know all that much about. "Dark Minds" is very good in that respect, but it's not in-depth enough because the host gets in the way of information with his theories.

Re: Cold Case Files; I don't want to get too far off the topic of the thread, but one of the best episodes was an hour devoted entirely to the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker, a serial rapist and killer who raped 60 women and killed 10 men and women in California in the late-'70s and early-'80s. He's still on the loose. Truly chilling!
Part 1 of 4:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/45QDIbXbtVk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

too bad they can't release all the episodes. Still the creepiest tv show theme music ever.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I loved the theme music but yes it was creepy as hell. I remember one night I fell asleep on my couch with the TV on and I woke up and that music is blaring and it freaked me the hell out :lol: There's way too many episodes for the show to be released in it's entirety but I'd definitely be down for some more best of sets.

They're two of the better Investigation Discovery shows if you ask me. I tend to find a lot of their programming cheesy but Disappeared is really well done and I don't mind the narrator on it. Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda is good too. Kenda seems like a pretty cool guy and I could listen to him tell stories about cases he's worked for a long time and not be bored.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Getting back to this, I agree with you wholeheartedly about Disappeared. An excellent, exceedingly well-produced show. I can't echo your high praise for Homicide Hunter at all, though I've only watched one episode so far. I like Kenda's laconic, world-weary affect a lot, but the show is horrendously produced. Wall-to-wall dramatizations and virtually no crime scene photos, news video, etc. Not my style at all. The same goes for a poorly-done show called Unusual Suspects, of which I have now watched all episodes. The show is full of recreations, faux-mugshots (which I find especially irksome, because they're trying to fool the viewers), and red-herring suspects from beginning to (almost) end. This show, and others in the genre, should have been condensed to 30 mins from 60. That's what made Forensic Files so great. No nonsense, no frills.

A show I found truly exceptional was a limited British series called Born to Kill, about psychopathic killers, many of them of the serial variety. The show's shortcoming is that, to people like us, well-versed in true crime, many of the cases are awfully familiar... but not all. Anyway, it's produced exactly the way I would produce a true crime show: dry, earnest, unflashy, totally devoid of re-enactments and other fakery. If you haven't seen it yet, Mike86, get ahold of it if you can.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

To me Homicide Hunter is good because of Kenda. He just is a cool guy to listen to and kind of draws you in. I don't think it's on the level of Unsolved Mysteries or Disappeared but it's one of the better modern shows of it's kind if you ask me. Especially compared to a lot of the crap on Investigation Discovery. I do agree that Homicide Hunter would be better if it had some actual crime scene photos or news footage from the time rather than being pretty much all re-enactments.

Might have to check out Born to Kill, sounds pretty interesting and I'm always looking for a good true crime type show.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I agree totally about Kenda. He's a memorably deadpan presence. I just don't like the show at all. I prefer straight, unadulterated documentaries.
I love Disappeared. Just watched the third episode and was surprised and delighted to find out at the end that the subject of the show (Michele Whitaker) was alive and well after having disappeared for 6 years. That show uses few recreations and uses them judiciously, discreetly. Born to Kill has no recreations whatsoever, which is even better. By the way, I was mistaken. Apparently episodes of B.t.K. are still being produced. I don't know the production status of Disappeared.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I don't know if it's confirmed or not but I believe Disappeared may have been cancelled. When Investigation Discovery announced their schedule for this year it was left off and I've read where some fans of the series have emailed them about if it will be back or not but basically receiving a generic response that they have nothing planned at this time. It's unfortunate as it really is one of my favorite of these kinds of shows since Unsolved Mysteries ended.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Yeah, that would be unfortunate if it's cancelled.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I stopped taping Disappeared on my DVR - since I've seen all the episodes now and they keep repeating. Same with Unsolved Mysteries - the same ones over and over again from 2008.

Right now - Notorious, Unusual Suspects, Aphrodite Jones True Crime and Snapped are set on my DVR for weekly taping.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

mickey65, don't you find Unusual Suspects annoying in that 3/4 of the show is one long, boring series of red herrings, as it cycles through a bunch of obvious but clearly not culpable suspects before finally unveiling the actual culprit?
Every single episode, the narrator intones the same "Could it be that her boyfriend learned of her stripping...?", "Is it possible his wife clued in to his affair...?", "Did Mike find out about Melissa's betrayal and...?", etc., for 30 minutes before we get to the real story. I felt all that superfluous crap could have been happily excised.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Actually I kind of like that "build up" - since I've been blown away by the time they get to the actual person who did it in a few cases.

But at least they explain every angle and as to why they would suspect each suspect.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Problem is, they explain it ad nauseam. One episode I liked was the one with the university girl who disappeared and was found murdered in the woods nearby, and then it turned out her female friend had killed her out of jealousy. That one was totally unexpected.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

So not Unsolved Mysteries related but I know that some of us in this thread enjoy good true crime shows. I was watching Investigation Discovery tonight and had noticed a promo for a new show called Last Seen Alive that sounded somewhat similar in premise to the show Disappeared, which to me is one of the best shows of it's type to air in recent years. I did a Google search and found out Last Seen Alive is actually produced by the same team and also found out that it sounds like Disappeared is returning too but in a revised format. It sounds like the new season will focus more on recent cases and the aftermath in the span of time closer to after the disappearances happen and make attempts to get the stories out there in hopes that viewers can possibly help in some of the cases. There's actually a new special airing tomorrow night called Missing in Maui. I'm kind of interested and thought some you guys might be too. Last Seen Alive starts on June 1st, not sure when the new season of Disappeared is set to air though (aside from tomorrow's special that is).

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Why don't you just start a new thread in TV talk about True Crime shows? :shrug: It might bring more discussion than constantly bumping this DVD thread leading people to think there is a new update on this show.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I figured because shows like that generally don't get a lot of attention and that a new thread would just end up lost in the shuffle. There's been discussion amongst some of us in this thread so I knew some people who regularly read it when it's bumped may be interested. :shrug:

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I'll take note of it of Last Seen Alive, thanks.
I don't like the sound of the new focus of Disappeared. I haven't watched a whole bunch of Disappeareds yet, but the vast majority of cases I've seen so far have been from the 2000s. I'd actually be more interested in older cases.
Another true crime show that's well above average, despite the asinine name, is Very Bad Men. It's of Canadian provenance, so I'm especially surprised that it's any good since Canada has been the source of some of the downright shittiest, lamest true crime shows around.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I agree about being iffy on the new season of Disappeared. I generally like older cases I may not know much about. I'm still going to watch it just because I really like the original version of the series. I'm hoping they don't just show cases that have been widely covered on the major news outlets and whatnot.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

^Totally agree. I generally have no interest in prominent cases either, especially modern-day ones. I want to hear about cases I don't know. Has Disappeared done the Wetterling case yet? That would be one I'd love to see covered in depth. It's time to find a solution for that poor family. I remember that from when I was a teenager, and it has haunted me ever since.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Mike86, one thing I've learned from Disappeared and other true crime shows is that the victims always lit up whatever rooms they walked into and gave others the shirts off their backs.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Mike86 and mickey65, have you had a look at Cold Justice? I don't know what channel it runs on in the States, but up here it's on Bravo. As far as I'm concerned, it's easily the best true crime show out there. It entails two women investigators, a prosecutor and a forensics specialist, looking at cold cases, some of them decades old. More often than not in the episodes I have seen thus far, they end up gathering enough new evidence to convince the D.A. to press charges. Fascinating stuff, and I love the show's use of maps, diagrams, crime scene photos and videos, taped interviews, etc. The only thing that turns me off, though I'm getting accustomed to it, is the surfeit of Southern accents.
If you haven't given this show a gander yet, do so!

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

Interesting, I may have to watch out for that. It appears to air on TNT in the US. I tend to enjoy shows that focus more on older cases so something like that focusing on cold cases is right up my alley. Most of Investigation Discovery is crap now if you ask me. All I watch on that channel are re-runs of Disappeared and Homicide Hunter. They aired Forensic Files for a while too but they re-named it for some reason. Haven't seen it on in a while though.

I also wish I could find some more of these Unsolved Mysteries sets for a decent price or that we'd get some new sets.

Re: Unsolved Mysteries : The Ultimate Collection ----> 3/21/06
 

I've seen maybe eight or ten episodes of Cold Justice so far (have a bunch more lined up on the PVR), and several of the cases were from the '80s and '90s.
I think you'll love it if all you're watching is reruns of those two shows. Try to catch up on old episodes of C.J. as well. It has been airing since '13. They're all worth seeing.

On a related note, there's a superb true crime documentary, commissioned by HBO some years back, called Have You Seen Andy?, about the unsolved 1976 abduction of 10-year-old Andy Puglisi from Lawrence, Ma. The filmmaker was a childhood friend of the boy's, and she returns to the town to investigate his disappearance, uncovering some shocking information in the process. It's a chilling, haunting film that I can't recommend highly enough to true crime aficionados.