Mystery Movie was a "wheel show", or "umbrella program." That is, it rotated several shows within the same time slot throughout the season. In its initial 1971-1972 season, it premiered with a rotation of three detective dramas that ran on Wednesday night from 8:30-10:00 in the Eastern Time Zone.

The three original 1971-72 shows were:

• McCloud, which starred Dennis Weaver as a New Mexico lawman reassigned to the New York Police Department, had debuted the previous season as part of the hour-long NBC wheel show Four in One.
• Columbo, which starred Peter Falk as a bumbling but deceptively clever Los Angeles police detective, was a new series created from a 1968 made-for-television movie, Prescription for Murder, which starred Falk in the same role.
• McMillan and Wife was a new show that starred Rock Hudson and Susan St. James as a husband-and-wife crime-fighting duo. Hudson's character was the San Francisco police commissioner.

The success of Mystery Movie prompted NBC to move the original three shows to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening for the second season as the The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. A fourth series, Heck Ramsey, starring Richard Boone as a crime-fighter in the Old West, was added to the rotation.

In addition, a clone of the umbrella series, The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie debuted in the original time slot and featured three new shows:

• Banacek, starred George Peppard as a free-lance insurance investigator in Boston.
• Cool Million
• Madigan

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