The Cleopatras

Written by Philip Mackie, who also penned "The Caesars" (1968), I recall the furore at the time here in the UK when the BBC started showing "The Cleopatras". This eight-parter was accused of being a seedy, tawdry - and just about everything else pejorative - depiction of the Ptolomeic court in Alexandria that saw a multitude of women called Cleopatra rule Egypt. What those criticisms failed to ack…