If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In the 21st century, we can also ask: if a millennial travels around in a campervan but doesn’t upload glossy pictures to Instagram captioned #vanlife, was it even worth it?

This phenomenon was explored in Sue Perkins’ Big American Road Trip (Channel 4). The programme title suggests this is a travel show, but it isn’t. The presenter was in California, but we didn’t really see any of it. No, this was a programme about living in a van. Type #vanlife into Instagram’s search engine and you will find 11.9 million posts featuring dreamy landscapes and cute little campervans.

Perkins started off by joking about this. She hired her own van and joined Instagram for the purposes of this trip, attempting to post an arty shot of her breakfast despite having to eat it from a plastic bowl she likened to a prison utensil. But many of the people she met during her travels had chosen to hit the road not as a lifestyle choice, but through economic necessity.

Alexandria had been living this life for seven years and spends most of her time “boondocking” – camping on federal land with no water or electricity provided. She had been studying and working two part-time jobs, but could not afford her rent. Her social media success – over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube – was a byproduct, rather than the goal. Her practical guides to van repairs and the like became popular. Perkins was preoccupied with the lack of toilet facilities, as I think we all would be, and Alexandria explained the drill: a tiny spade and a hole in the ground. Perkins looked stricken.

The majority of people living out of campervans are over 40 years old, and Perkins met the granddaddy of them all: Bob Wells, who has a cult-like status within the RV (recreational vehicle) community. You will have seen Wells if you watched Nomadland, the semi-fictionalised, Oscar-winning film starring Frances McDormand.

But if you saw Nomadland, you will have learned a great deal about the lives of older Americans reduced to these circumstances, doing tough seasonal work in Amazon warehouses or tourist resorts. Perkins barely scratched the surface of this, instead waxing lyrical about life on the open road. This wasn’t a deep exploration, more of a tourist trip.