Free As A Bird:Trailblazers:A Rocky Mountain Road Trip.

I'd never heard of Isabella Bird. She is just one of many many women who have been more or less written out of history and, in recent years - finally, is being written back into it. She was a fascinating character. Born in Yorkshire in 1831, by the age of 41 she was suffering with a bad back and a general 'malaise'. Advised to get some fresh air she headed off to the Rocky Mountains in America in 1873 and from there she never looked back.

On horseback, she rode eight hundred miles across the Rockies in three months. She met pioneers panning for gold, she helped cowboys wrangle cattle, climbed 14,000ft high Longs Peak (in men's shoes three sizes too big for her and a dress), faced down grizzly bears, and ate cherry kernels from the stomach of a dead bear when there was no other food to be found. She even fell for a one eyed alcoholic ruffian called Mountain Jim. She was four foot and eleven inches tall.

In Trailblazers:A Rocky Mountain Road Trip (BBC2/iPlayer), Ruby Wax, Mel B, and Emily Atack tell her story while going on their Rockies road trip (though in a Jeep rather than horseback). At the same time they manage to uncover a few obvious, and a few less obvious, truths about American society both then and now as well as tease each other relentlessly and muck about a far old bit.

It's educational, sure, but more than that it's heart-warming and charming. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Their journey starts in Cheyenne, Wyoming for a look at taxidermy and a meal of Rock Island deep fried oysters which, spoiler alert, are not oysters at all but bull's testicles. Yum.

The rest of the journey, apart from one brief stop in Utah's Moab (the red rock desert where Thelma and Louise died), is all in Colorado. They travel from Estes Park (9,000ft high peaks with "health in every breath of air" and now a tourist destination") to the gambling mecca of Central City (once the site of a gold rush and nicknamed the richest square mile on Earth) and on to Aspen, a ski resort and billionaire's playground where rich divorced men come to meet young attractive women and where there's a ludicrously priced hat shop (a mere hat band may set you back $6,000) with an attached cocktail bar.

In Aspen they learn about something called the 'paradise paradox'. Despite all its wealth many in Aspen are very unhappy and the city has a very high suicide rate. The bluegrass festival in Durango looks much more fun and life affirming and the people living off the grid in the desert ghost town of Cisco seem much happier in their lot. Atack describes the former railway town as looking like an "abandoned Alton Towers".

Ruby, Mel, and Emily visit Colorado's spiritual centre, home of Native American ceremonies, and - this is America - UFO hotspot, Crestone and when they attend a festival with the indigenous Ute tribe (all bear dances and talk of sweat lodges) they learn that the dream for them is not ever increasing wealth but, quite simply, self-sufficiency.

It's quite telling. Being in America, we obviously touch on guns, God, and a greedy destruction of nature (which, admittedly, is hardly unique to the US) and equally obviously we take in some of the most awesome and breathtaking scenery the planet has to offer but we keep coming back to that thorny old concept, the American Dream.

For many the American Dream seems to be tied up with consumerism and worship of money. It's been such an powerful driving force in US history that entire forests were cut down, millions of buffalo were slaughtered, and it ultimately resulted in the near genocide of all 'Indian' people. On the day that Donald Trump has been indicted and is suspected to use that to stir up hate and division in the country this seems as relevant now as ever.

But Ruby Wax, Mel B, and Emily Atack aren't Simon Schama, Ken Burns, or Adam Curtis and they're not here to get political. They're in Colorado to have some fun and try new experiences while they learn about Isabella Bird. We see them horse riding, rock climbing, fishing, wandering around in snow shoes, off roading, trying rodeo, allowing wolves to lick their faces, drinking Bourbon with pickle juice chasers, sasquatch hunting, and 'stumbling' on an old mining town, Gold Hill, which looks like a Wild West Hollywood film set.

They even make a mural of Isabella Bird. While some of the pranks appear to be staged the chemistry between the three presenters comes across as genuine. They sing Wannabe in the Jeep, when Ruby drives (terribly) Mel B becomes a very persistent back seat driver and Emily even takes time out to swipe on celebrity Tinder halfway up a mountain. She's big with the selfies too and has a very crude, very British, sense of humour. Giggling at a horse's multi-coloured dick and barely able to control herself when she's introduced to a musical instrument called a growler.

Set to a soundtrack of Johnny Cash, Blondie, Steppenwolf, Shania Twain, Lil Nas X, Woody Guthrie, Whitney Houston, LeAnn Rimes, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cyndi Lauper, Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Denver, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, First Aid Kit, and Doc Watson's wonderfully evocative Freight Train Boogie, it's all great fun.

A fun way to learn. I warmed to all three presenters. I didn't really know anything about Emily Atack beforehand but she seemed to go on the biggest mental, and emotional, journey of all three. Obviously I know who Mel B is (she was one of The Spice Girls for FFS, she even reveals here that Geri and Emma were her two favourites) but despite being ironically scared of lots of things she seemed a good sport and it was hard not to laugh when she mixed up the words yeti and jetty and then, later on, flagellation and flatulation. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I've never been a fan of Ruby Wax but she won me over here by singing the Beverly Hillbillies theme tune and telling stories of being the daughter of Austrian immigrants and being bullied at school for speaking German. All three of them were great but Isabella Bird? She was a bad-ass.