Telly Talk: Gripping, fascinating, emotional, funny and the simplest concept to have hit the small screen since the test card. Stand up the television executive who devised One Born Every Minute and take a bow, orders Tracey O’Sullivan.

This is compulsive viewing and fabulous television. If anyone was in any doubt that there’s nowt so interesting as folk they should watch this fly-on-the-wall masterpiece.

The format is pure genius. Take 40 cameras, scatter them around a maternity unit and must-see television will follow.

There’s no expensive voice-over star, no introductions and no explanations. It’s just life as it happens at its most basic and most natural, with a few post-birth interviews (with the couples looking a tad more relaxed) thrown in for good measure.

There’s no Oscar up for grabs here but the characters do leap off the screen, from teenage parents-to-be Malcolm and Janet – who pleaded for her own mummy rather than the boy who was to become a man when she reached the final stages of labour – to the expectant mum with a heart complaint who was admitted to hospital at 32 weeks for the safety of her unborn child.

They briefly star in the show and then disappear again with their new additions, but the glimpse at that pivotal and brief moment of their lives feels like a privilege and an education all rolled into one. There was the dad who innocently suggested he “nip out and get a paper” as his wife was feeling contractions only to incur her wrath (those men, they never learn), to the new mum about to deliver her baby in the back of the car as her husband sped to the maternity unit doors.

The tension was better than the best EastEnders “duff, duff, duff” moment as the little one arrived in double-quick speed with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. To watch the midwives work their magic to revive this newborn within seconds and to hear that cry after what after what seemed like an endless silence had me in tears before the programme reached the first advertisement break.

Watching the drama unfold is an experience to relish, but this is also a programme filled with the classic comedy moments – the screamer from last week’s episode which producers coupled with shots of the reaction to her high-decibel coping mechanism from other pregnant ladies and the maternity unit staff. Amused – you will be. They certainly were not.

In the words of Peter Kay, it was “television gold”.

If you haven’t seen it yet and you can cope with the hospital scenes, unlike the sister who promised to be there to support the arrival of her new niece and then promptly threw up throughout the whole process, then tune in next week.

You won’t regret it.