BBC One's new series of Travelling Auctioneers brings lots of pleasure

It has a rota of auctioneers including Izzie Balmer, Briony Harford and James Broad – also known as JB who is also a familiar face to fans – and I am one – of The Bidding Room.

Its team of restorers include Will Kirk, Lauren Wood, JJ Chalmers and Saf Fäkir who lovingly breathe new life into weary objects.

The back stories and action are narrated by auctioneer Christina Trevanion who has presented the show and is also a regular on Flog It and Antiques Road Trip.

Despite launching nine years ago, the show has mercifully avoided the default setting of such shows – the celebrity version.

Its focus is on ordinary people endeavouring to cope with all that life can throw at them – the adversities most of us are all too familiar with – including caring for elderly parents, poorly relatives, funding care, treatment and coping with grief; and the challenges we love including paying for treats – holidays, weddings, honeymoons and dining out with family and friends.

With the need to raise funds for whatever, a team of two – auctioneer and restorer – rock up at the participants’ house and set to work finding treasures to put under the hammer.

They arrive in the third member of the team – a blue Citroen van which houses Tardis-like everything the auctioneers and, moreover, the restorers need.

Each 45-minute episode features the search and restoration before the auctioneer takes to the portable blue rostrum and sells the items found.

The Travelling Auctioneers is a mix of Through the Keyhole, Find It, Fix It, Flog It, Antiques Road Trip and Flog It.

Sometimes a huge gem is unearthed which brings in thousands of pounds at a sale, mostly little treasures raise modest amounts – £10, £18 or £20 – which add up to, as Arthur Daley would say, a nice little earner.

For instance, one couple took home £575 after selling their Chinese porcelain figures and pictures with the cash going to the Alzheimer’s Society and another husband and wife, downsizing, made £2,150 to pay for a trip to Ypres in Belgium.

Each episode takes the viewers to a different part of the country from Wales to Scotland and from Cromer, Norfolk, to Bromsgrove, Worcestershire – as Christina would say: “How gavel with travel.”

Each show is a heart-warming, sometimes heart-breaking, slice of real life in 21st-century Britain.

Watching The Travelling Auctioneers, this time around, has added poignancy for me: the series has included sisters who have lost both parents.

My mum and dad died within six months of each other last year and, between us, my two sisters and I cared for them both in their own home.

The episodes featuring people living with dementia – were also close to home and were, thanks to auctioneers and restorers, comforting and cathartic.

The kindness and understanding – knowledge and expertise are a given – of Izzy, Lauren, JJ, JB et all is life-affirming.

The Travelling Auctioneers is only an afternoon BBC One show, but its value is immeasurable.