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‘Limonádový Joe’ (Lemonade Joe) is a cult sixties Czech western cum musical about a lemonade salesman in the Wild West. The film started life as column in a newspaper written by Jiří Brdečka during the war, before becoming a theatre play, and then finally the all-singing, all-dancing, film production Czechs know and love today. Tereza Brdečková is a film critic and the daughter of Jiří Brdečka, the man who conceived the movie:

Just a few minutes’ walk from Prague Castle, the monumental Černín Palace stands out in Hradčany’s Loreto Square. Built in the 17th and 18th centuries as the residence of the Černín aristocratic family, the Baroque palace now houses the Foreign Ministry of the Czech Republic. But the history of the largest of Prague’s Baroque palaces has seen more than politics – it has witnessed ambition, corruption and even a mystery death.

Organic food is selling in ever increasing quantities in the Czech Republic. Between 2006 and 2007 sales grew by almost 50 percent, and some predict further growth of around a third every year until 2011. That’s good news for Greens. However, they’re less pleased about the fact over half of the organic produce sold in this country is imported from abroad. Hoping to change that, the Czech branch of Friends of the Earth has just launched a new campaign entitled Hledá se česká buchta, or Czech Cake Wanted. I discussed it and other aspects of the Czech

On Sunday The Counterfeiters, based on the memoirs of Prague resident Adolf Burger, won the Academy Award for best foreign language film. Mr Burger’s book The Devil’s Workshop tells the remarkable story of a Nazi scheme under which Jewish concentration camp prisoners – including the author – were put to work forging US and UK banknotes, with the aim of destabilising the Allies’ economies. Adolf Burger, who is 90, was in Hollywood to enjoy The Counterfeiters Oscar victory. To celebrate his success we are re-broadcasting Mr Burger’s story, which first

I am standing on Prague’s magistrála, an artery cutting through the centre of Prague. If you have ever visited the Czech capital you could hardly have failed to notice the main road which cuts across the top of Prague’s main square, Wenceslas Square. It was built in the early 1970s to ease growing traffic in the capital, but it soon became a nightmare for the people living along the magistrála. It was originally designed for 20 000 vehicles a day at the most, but nowadays nearly five times as many cars drive through the city each day. So, how come

For decades, Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Europe, and its dire economic situation meant that many young Irish emigrants moved abroad in search of work. Now, however, the situation has been completely reversed. A sustained economic boom means that foreign workers including thousands of Czechs are now flocking to Ireland in search of employment. In Dublin alone, there are now so many people from the Czech Republic living there that a Czech bar has even opened up to cater for them. In this edition of Panorama, we pay a visit to Ireland's

It’s Monday evening and the ballroom in Prague’s Lucerna is slowly filling up with teenagers in evening dresses. Girls are rushing to the dressing room to take off their trainers and slip into high-heeled shoes while boys are instructed to tuck in their shirts and spit out their chewing gums before they are allowed onto the dance floor. A lot has changed since 15 years ago, when I used to come here, but the tradition of Czech dancing lessons or “taneční”, as they are called, appears to enjoy the same popularity.

Czech women’s basketball is on the rise. The national team, currently ranking 10th in the world, won the European Championship in 2005. Two teams from the Trocal Women’s League regularly participate in Euroleague, Europe’s most prestigious club competition, and one of them – Gambrinus Sika Brno – even won the entire event in 2006. With more international success, more international players have come to the Czech women’s basketball league – roughly 20 foreigners are on the line-ups of the 10 first division clubs this year. One of them, playing for

Bluegrass originates from the Appalachian region of the United States of America, and is a type of music as American as apple pie. But bluegrass enjoys a long and rich history in the Czech Republic too. Lee Bidgood is an ethnomusicologist at the University of Virginia - the cradle of bluegrass. For the past five years, he’s been looking at the way this music is performed in the Czech Republic:

“…A Bude Hůř” (It’s Gonna Get Worse), published in 1985 by author Jan Pelc, based in Paris at the time, has long enjoyed cult status, arguably remaining one of the rawest testimonies of the Normalisation period which followed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. The novel maps main character Olin and his acquaintances’ descent into booze and drugs in the ‘70s in a working class area in north Bohemia, a hard-hitting cocktail of abuse and destruction underlined by daily clashes with authority and a desire for escape.