From Cleopatra to Elizabeth I and Sophie Scholl – they're all women from vastly contrasting eras and backgrounds, but with one thing in common: they are some of the most influential women in history. Powerful and helpless, popular and scorned, determined and desperate – each one of them stood out from her peers in some way.

This dramatised series portrays these remarkable women in unprecedented detail, and examines their lives both in a contemporary context as well as from a historical perspective.