24 Hours in A&E review: Never mind the blood and gore, this gem of a show is all about restoring your faith in humanity

This week's first episode, in fact, was light on the awful injuries – or at least the obvious signs of them.

It was subtitled Boys Just Want to Have Fun, a slightly sarcastic way of saying some men who are old enough to know better take part in risky activities.

Three cases came through the doors of the accident and emergency department at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham.

Miroslav – known to family and friends as Milky – had come off his motorbike at 60mph an hour and fractured several vertebrae in his neck.

Meanwhile, Shaun, the 46-year-old dad of daredevil Joel, had decided to accompany his son on a free-fall parachute jump, and had come into land too hard and dislocated his ankle.

The exception to the middle-aged men reliving their youths theme was little Coby, who had managed to swallow a coin, in one of those incidents that anyone familiar with young children will recognise.

Sometimes, 24 Hours in A&E is about the gruesome, or the extreme, and the amazing ways modern technology and the ingenuity of NHS staff can save people's lives.

But more often, it isn't about the injury, or the treatment.

It's about everything that goes on around the patient – the doctors, the nurses, the family and friends.

It's about the best of people, not the worst – about how we still rely on other people for comfort, for help for anything.

It's about the way hugely stressful situations reveal how we combat them through humour, stoicism, emotional support in whatever form it may take.

“I was ready for the worst,” says Milky's wife Kinga, as everything in her face gives away the fact that she was not ready, not ready at all.

It's about the calm efficiency of people who know what they're doing – experts, in other words – and trust we place in them.

Meanwhile, with minimum narration, little in the way of emotionally manipulative music, no sensationalism, 24 Hours in A&E makes you care about the people being wheeled through those doors.

By the end, when you get little captions revealing what happened to the patients after their treatment, you are left hoping the worst hasn't happened.

Fortunately, this week it didn't; although Milky has put his beloved motorbike up for sale, he has found a less risky pursuit – a game of chess with his daughter.

Shaun meanwhile, is healing well, and little Coby is back home with his family, and all the coins are well out of reach.

As a love letter to the NHS, 24 Hours in A&E comes lightly fragranced with Chanel No.5 and sealed with a loving kiss. As a tribute to human resilience, love and strength, it's low-key, but makes a huge impact.

And in the middle of a rancorous election campaign, it restores your faith in human nature. No wonder it's lasted so long.