By Monday morning — which is to say, less than 24 hours after the debut of TV Nova's Big Brother Sunday, Aug. 28 — the station had the names and faces of 12 contestants posted prominently on its Web site. Which was odd, because the night before, 13 contestants had walked into the house. Who was No. 13, and what happened to her?

The missing contestant is Klára Horzinková, a 30-year-old business consultant. What happened is that, quite simply, she was set up. To inject some drama and a touch of bloodletting into the opening episode of the three-month-long reality show, the producers required that one member of the group be kicked out within minutes after the initial 13 had settled into the house.

This came as a shock to Horzinková and her sister Eva, 29, who were singled out for elimination. Each was given 30 seconds to plead her case for staying on and then the group had to drop the ax on one or the other.

It was mean-spirited, degrading, abusive — in short, everything Big Brother is designed to be. And because she signed a contract agreeing not to talk to the media without TV Nova's approval, there wasn't much Horzinková could do or say about it.

Her boyfriend, however, signed no such contract. And Peter Newman had plenty to say about it over the next couple days, including a phone call to The Prague Post promising a singular tale of woe. But his tone had softened considerably by a lunch meeting the following Thursday. The night before, he and Horzinková had appeared on the show and were presented with a consolation prize, a 100,000 Kč ($4,100) voucher for a trip abroad.

Nonetheless, Newman was in a feisty mood at lunch. "I've been to hell and back again," he declared. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. They want a great show and they use people without any regard for their feelings."

The sting will no doubt subside when Newman and Horzinková are basking in the sun at some tropical resort during the dark days of winter. But for now they typify the reality-show madness that seems to have seized the country. The more Czechs are embarrassed and debased on shows such as Big Brother and the earlier quiz show Nejsabši! Máte padáka (The Weakest Link), the more of it they seem to want — like most other TV-watching nations these days. It's like a train wreck: horrifying and repulsive on one level yet irresistibly compelling on another. And it produces some odd behavior in otherwise normal people.

Smooth Svengali

Newman, 34, is a British expat working for a financial-services firm in Prague. He and Horzinková have been together for two years. Or maybe three.

"Two," says Horzinková with a sweet smile.

"Three," says Newman with an even bigger smile.

"Well, two and a half," says Horzinková.

"Nearly three," declares Newman.

About this they can agree: In spring this year, a newspaper ad for a Big Brother casting call caught their eye. Newman had seen the show in England and thought his girlfriend should try out. "She's a professional person, very intelligent and telegenic," he says. "Not typical of the profile they select."

Newman also has a Svengali streak in him, and was excited by the thought of spurring Horzinková to stardom. "I coached her through the whole process," he says proudly. "It was a project: Could I do it? Or could Klára do it without me?"

The coaching began with helping pick the photo to submit with her application and continued through the interviews that trimmed 6,000 applicants down to hundreds, then dozens, and by early August to a final 40. Horzinková made it through every round, with Newman helping choreograph her behavior ("Always look directly in the camera") and responses ("Short, concise; don't waffle"), and haggling over small details like her interview times — always first or last and never in the gray, forgotten middle.

Whatever Newman and Horzinková did, it worked. When a TV Nova crew went around in mid-August handing out envelopes to the winners (and 27 losers, the first to be humiliated on camera), Klára was among the winners. As it happened, so was her sister Eva — one year younger than Klára and, according to Newman, completely different.

Eva is a police-academy graduate currently in her final year of law school. Compared to her sister, Newman says, she has "different opinions, values, friends — she's so different, you wouldn't believe they're sisters." Which might have explained why both made the final cut. During the interview sessions, station reps had said that no friends or relatives could be on the show together — the contestants had to be complete strangers. But according to Newman, there's also a clause in the contract every contestant must sign which essentially says that the station can change the rules anytime it wants.

So Newman and Horzinková shrugged it off. Who were they to argue if TV Nova wanted both sisters on the program?

Onerous Orwell

By the time the big day arrived, Newman had lost his enthusiasm. In fact, he says, he was distraught. "Suddenly I was faced with the prospect of Klára disappearing from my life for a significant period of time," he says. "I felt fear, trepidation and concern."

His girlfriend, he says, had similar misgivings. Friends had warned her that she would damage her career and reputation by going on the show. "Imagine an entire nation gossiping about her," says Newman. But in the end, he says, Klára decided that she could sell herself to the viewing audience as successfully as she had sold herself to the screening committees.

The sales job didn't last long. Klára was one of the first people in the house, and while the other contestants were being introduced she looked around and, according to Newman, didn't like what she saw. "Our flat is the size of that entire house," he says. "Little bedrooms, little kitchen, artificial lawn — it's almost like Abu Ghraib, isn't it?"

So when the moment came to give her or Eva the boot, Klára volunteered to go. And the rest of the group seemed relieved to accept the offer. "She made it easy for them," says Newman, adding his own spin on the vote: "She's intelligent, she was a threat."

As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Newman wasn't forced to live without his girlfriend. Klára didn't have to spend a single night in that horrible house. And they landed right where they wanted to be — not in the gray middle of people getting kicked off the show week after week, but as an unwitting victim the very first night, with the sympathy of a nation and a sweet consolation prize.

So what's Newman's beef?

"My nightmare had a silver lining," he concedes. "But I want the world to know that TV is not all bright lights and glamour. There's a human cost behind it all — pain, anguish, nerves, trepidation. It's a warning to the general population."

And he has a final quip. The phrase "big brother" dates from George Orwell's nightmarish novel 1984. But Newman offers another Orwell novel as a better namesake. "The reality shows are not 1984," he says. "They're Animal Farm."