But even as it's embraced the best the West has to offer, the country seems ready and willing to adopt the worst as well. In fact, it may have come so far so fast that it doesn't leave much further to go in the new year.

Having dusted off an old American TV format with nascent soap operas — TV Nova's Ordinace v Růžové zahradě and Prima's Rodinná pouta — it forces audiences to consider what's next. Why not a soaper set in Parliament, a la The West Wing, but with far better looking and more-clever politicians wrangling for power than the real ones who inspire the show?

You know, just like the Yanks do.

The success of Czech reality television, evidenced by the Dutch franchise Big Brother on TV Nova and its Prima TV competitor VyVolení, clearly isn't going away soon. But how to ramp it up as a hot property?

Consider the millions who tuned in to watch the two stations duel it out in a head-to-head morality-limbo contest, asking, "Just how low can they go?" If the obscenity fines of 13 million Kč ($539,200) from the Czech Council for Radio and TV Broadcasting, now basically considered just one more production cost, increase to an actual level of punishment in 2006, it could get interesting. The stations may just take their huge audiences to the Land of Pay-Per-View.

And what lies ahead in the great Czech literary world? Bookstores quickly sold out this year's stocks of The Da Vinci Code and the latest Harry Potter tome, proving, if there were any doubt, that these are global phenomena. But the Czech incarnation of the Western "tell-all" book is truly the genre on fire here. So far, these have included The Truth about VyVolení by Petr Zvěřina, one of the show's outcasts, and My Life with Vladko written by Robert Votruba, the former partner of VyVolení winner Vladko Dobrovodský.

Politicians have jumped aboard, with more than 135,000 copies moved of How I Erred in Politics by former Prime Minister Miloš Zeman. A sequel is on the way in 2006 about the rise and fall of his Social Democrats, but what's next for the tell-all bestseller? Billionaire criminals outing the politicians they bribed to flee the country and escape prosecution?

Oh, wait ... we're there already.

And what's the next leisure-time craze? This country has readily grasped the Western penchant for brazen commercialism, even on hallowed ground, so anything's possible.

The Czech Golf Federation accredited the Maria Theresia Golf Club in Terezín in April, which helped to gentrify the land that immediately surrounds the former Nazi concentration camp that lies there. Insert joke about shooting out of the bunker.

When golfers can improve their handicap and simultaneously remember the Holocaust, paintball battles in the Jewish Cemetery can't be far behind.

And what about personal finance? Just last year, Czechs took advantage of the American mortgage and this holiday season you can hear the audible swipe of credit cards as Czechs fall deeper into debt buying gifts.

We foresee borrowing against spouses, children and pets as the next big thing. After all, financing wall-sized plasma TV screens and new Audis is getting to be a squeeze unless more credit can be taken on fast.

If we don't forge some new ground here, it may just mean winter in Thailand is off for 2006.