Horrible Histories S08E10 - Fierce Females

A show celebrating some of history's greatest and most formidable females. We begin with ancient tales of the Scythians – incredible warrior women who were part of the inspiration for the wonder women that we're more familiar with today (seemingly, the Scythians were a little more boozy and fighty than their comic book counterparts of today). Great women have often had to struggle to get their messages across, and this is something that Joan of Arc has to deal with when the director of Joan of Arc: The Movie has some ideas about killer lines for her to deliver as part of the film. 

Elsewhere, Marie Antoinette has a revolutionary go at social media, and we take a trip to Historical Love Island, where modern pencil salesman Sam gets way more than he bargained for after choosing to couple with Spartan warrior queen Gorgo. Queen Cleopatra also goes on Historical First Dates in search of a husband who is not her brother. 

We look at some specifically female jobs from history: in 1930s America, we meet the Hello Girls – women employed to work in the huge telephone exchanges, who wore rollerskates for speed and headsets that weighed roughly the same as two bags of sugar, as they navigated their way through miles of switchboards. Also, in Don't Call the Tudor Midwife, we peer into the mysterious world of Tudor midwifery, a place in which only women were allowed, and one that men would try to infiltrate in a bid to learn their birthing secrets (which included the use of snake skins, rabbit milk and reading). There's an epic a cappella-off between the suffragettes and the suffragists, and the show ends with some of history's most powerful female rulers - Queen Elizabeth I, Mary I, Mary, Queen of Scots and Lady Jane Gray, aka supergroup The Tudor Queens – joining together for a song celebrating the fact that they had the power.