CULTURAL HISTORY is powerful, which explains why programme commissioners give the green light to series like Brilliant Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of Three Cities (20 August), whose title conceals three mini-breaks in Vienna, Paris and New York. It takes the time-honoured idea of cultural “hotspots” and gives it a ­thoroughly modern treatment. The first episode, focusing on Vienna in 1908, is easy on the eye, ticking the appropriate boxes for an audience assumed to be uninterested in complexity but committed to key-figure stamp-­collecting (Hitler; Klimt; Freud; Loos; Schoenberg). That means naked ladies, uniforms, racism, a feminist hero who, thankfully, was very interested in prostitution, and a couple of attractive cake shops. The sole risk taken was in calculat