When eviction is mentioned on television, it usually means voting someone out of the Big Brother house. Evicted (BBC One) showed the reality as it followed two families searching for a roof over their heads. In Nottingham, five-year-old Chloe’s family were evicted after a mix-up with their housing benefit and they were declared “intentionally homeless”. In a B&B, she befriended a homeless teenager, Sarah, anxious about her missed schooling.

A hot meal usually meant leaving canned baked beans on a radiator during the day in the hope that they’d be warm by the evening. In Somerset, 13-year-old Charlotte’s father, who had given up his job to care for his clinically depressed wife, struggled to find permanent accommodation while determined that his children weren’t taken into care.

Brian Woods’s film showed the debilitating existence of hostels, B&Bs, living out of suitcases and constant uncertainty experienced by children technically without a home while tensions build between their parents. As the sweet-natured Sarah remarked: “A house is not bricks and mortar, it is a family home, a place to have fun.”

This understated but angry film was tucked away after the 10pm news. I guess there wasn’t a secret millionaire on hand to give it a deserved primetime slot and to make everything seem magically right at the end.