Television series
The Ascent of Woman
Amanda Foreman guides you through 12,000 years of women reshaping civilization—warriors, inventors, rebels, and architects you've probably never heard of. It's rigorous history delivered with infectious enthusiasm, balancing grand sweep with intimate biography. For anyone tired of history that forgot half the human race.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like history delivered as a presenter's brisk, personal tour through individual lives, the sweep from prehistory to now feeling like a long walk with a well-read guide.
Skip it if you want depth in one period or a real debate among historians; this broad survey skims centuries each hour and can feel more like a tour than an argument.
What it asks of you: Four hour-long episodes covering roughly twelve millennia, so you sit with a fast, wide-angle survey rather than a slow immersion; the presenter stays at the centre of every episode.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Civilisations2018
Mary Beard reframes art history around power, identity, and whose stories got told. Like Ascent of Woman but focused on how women shaped culture through the visual arts, with Beard's scholarly warmth guiding every discovery.
But Three hours per episode demands real attention, and the aesthetic arguments can feel abstract if you're seeking straightforward narrative.
Hidden Figures2016
Black women mathematicians whose calculations sent rockets to space were literally written out of NASA's history. Entertaining, moving, and historically vital—a perfect complement to Foreman's approach.
But It's engineered to feel good, which means some complexity gets smoothed; purists might find it too polished for a story this real.
The Defiant Ones2017
Jimmy Page and Jack White's musical partnership told through archival footage and obsessive detail. Shows how women shaped rock's sound and mythology while the men get the credit—subtle but inescapable.
But Heavy on music-industry backstory; if you don't care about how guitar solos got made, the deeper narrative won't grip you.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Ascent of Woman
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes1953
Both ask whose history we choose to celebrate: Foreman uncovers erased women, Monroe was canonized as a pretty face despite being a shrewd performer choosing her own narrative. The film proves that women reshaping their world didn't start in 2015.
Lorelei Lee is a gold digger, yes—but she's playing the game, not played by it. Watch Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell move through a man's world with complete self-knowledge. It's a feminist text written in sequins and wit.
But It's a musical from the 1950s—if the genre signals bother you, the brilliance underneath won't matter. Requires you to listen to what the women are actually saying beneath the spectacle.
More like this (4)
She Said2022
The reporters who broke Harvey Weinstein's story get their own film—a procedural about women doing meticulous work nobody noticed until suddenly everyone had to. Spare and gripping.
But It's deliberately unglamorous about journalism, which means long scenes of phone calls and digging through documents. Not a thriller, more a study in persistence.
Suffragette2015
Synchronicity with Ascent of Woman: the British suffragette movement dramatized through working-class women rather than famous leaders. Brutal, unglamorous, and urgent.
But Made in the same year as Ascent, it covers overlapping ground from a narrative angle, so less fresh if you want new material.
The Passion of Joan of Arc1928
Joan of Arc appears in Ascent of Woman's narrative, but Dreyer gives you the woman herself: not history, but presence. It's how to feel the cost of changing the world, not just learn it intellectually.
Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent film is a close-up study of a woman whose conviction literally changed the course of history. Renée Jeanne Falconetti's face says more about power, faith, and defiance than dialogue ever could.
But Silent film, 1928, no action—it's purely performance and camera work. Demands you sit with difficult images of suffering rather than explain them away with plot.
Chungking Express1994
Ascent of Woman traces how women claimed agency across history. Chungking Express shows it in real time: women in 1994 Hong Kong already assumed the right to their own desires, their own mystery. It's what the ascent looks like when it arrives.
Wong Kar-wai's neon-soaked Hong Kong romance has two women who define themselves entirely on their own terms: mysterious, self-sufficient, romantic without needing rescue. Pure cinema, pure modernity, pure joy.
But It's a tonal and visual experiment, not a conventional drama—the meaning lives in colour and motion rather than plot. Some find that intoxicating, others frustrating.
People
Cast
Amanda ForemanPresenter
Production
- Emma HindleyExecutive Producer