Unforgotten does a lot of things right. A good mystery builds layers of complication, but not too many. It surprises you, but it plays by the rules it sets and doesn't decide at the last minute that a person you've never heard about before is the culprit for a reason unconnected to anything you've learned. It doesn't allow you to guess in the first ten minutes, but it doesn't make it seem pointless to try to solve the case in your mind.
And ideally, it is pushed forward by detectives who are appealing enough to become the heroes, but reserved enough to stay out of the way. Perhaps one reason Unforgotten works so well is that DCI Stuart, in particular, almost never raises her voice. Her determination is communicated through stillness, but her excitement when she learns something important animates her eyes. The forensics people who work with her take great pride in thrilling her with what they've discovered. She's clever and patient, and for reasons the show doesn't feel obligated to explain, it just sticks in her craw that a case might be abandoned simply because it's old.
One of the things that distinguishes a mystery about a cold case that's approximately as old as this one turns out to be is that it tells the stories of older people who are viewed in their capacities as full and complicated humans with pasts, rather than as grandparents or wise advisers. All old people were once young people, with the secrets and the dramas and the sex lives and the unsettled identities television typically associates with being young. Here, the history of each person, made of achievements and regrets, is the central idea in the story. That even enriches the entire idea of investigating a murder, as it reinforces that had the murder not happened, the victim would, too, be an older person with regrets and achievements that never came to be.
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