Long Lost Family: First episode meets Thomas, who was found as an infant in the waiting room at Reading train station in 1965

Monday: Long Lost Family (ITV1, 9pm)

When Long Lost Family began airing back in 2011, it quickly became one of ITV’s best-loved series as it brought us the emotional stories of people who wanted to trace their birth families or siblings and children who were given up for adoption.

Many of the people featured in that series had some idea of where they came from and what their origins were though, even if it was vague.

However, Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, which began in 2019, has focused on people who would once have had little chance of finding their relatives. That’s because it features foundlings, many of whom were discovered as babies in public places, with no record of where they came from or who their parents were.

Presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell

Nicky Campbell, who co-hosts both shows with Davina McCall, believes that’s an important distinction. He was adopted himself at four days old, and later chose to trace his own birth mother.

Speaking ahead of an earlier series of Born Without Trace, he said: “Many people on Long Lost Family feel an emptiness because they have been adopted or estranged, but this is an emptiness and a total void.

“I understand, no matter how happy your adoption is, that nagging sense of rejection that many adopted people get. But this is a feeling of rejection on another level.”

He added: “This is the most extraordinary programme. It’s not just profoundly moving, it’s socially important, because this goes on and on for these people.”

The first episode meets Thomas, who was found as an infant in the waiting room at Reading train station in 1965. Using DNA technology and detective work, the team are able to find a relative – and extraordinarily, it’s Martina, another foundling who was left as a baby on the steps of a Dublin church. Understandably, this discovery leaves them both with further questions, but they are about to be given some life-changing answers.

The series continues on Tuesday with the story of Rachel, whose adoptive mother always told her ‘you were like Paddington Bear, you were found at a train station’. Now, she wants to know more about how she came to be discovered in a battered carry cot in Euston Station’s long-stay car park.

Meanwhile, Steve doesn’t even know where he was found – he was taken into care from an unlicensed foster home, and no records of him exist until he was nine months old.

In Wednesday’s episode, we hear from Liz, who was found in a shopping basket under a Birmingham hedge and has since managed to overcome pretty much every obstacle in her way – apart from the mystery surrounding her identity.

Susanne was left in an East London phone box along with a heartbreaking note from her birth mother and is hoping that a DNA match could bring her a joyful connection.

Then on Thursday, Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace – What Happened Next updates us on 20 foundlings who have previously featured on the show.