Even the greatest artists sometimes take an idea here and a line there from other works of art. Popular entertainment does this even more aggressively, even automatically. And no medium in history does it more shamelessly or instantly than television. Calling TV "derivative" or "unoriginal" is itself a deeply unoriginal insight, but lately the copycatting has reached a pathological new level.

Successful series now steal from themselves, reproducing by explicit cloning -- Law & Order has become three going on four different Law & Order shows. CSI has spawned CSI Miami.

Producers try to turn hit movies into hit TV shows by stealing other creators' creations. Like the new Fox program Fast Lane, which was, um, inspired by last year's huge teen car movie The Fast and the Furious. In this case, the TV series is actually superior to the film.

On the other hand, NBC's new sitcom The Inlaws is not a ripoff of the 1979 movie starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. No, it's a ripoff -- an egregious, unfunny ripoff -- of Meet the Parents.

But usually the prototype for TV copycats is somebody else's successful TV show. In 2002 the most successful new show was the reality game show American Idol…in which dozens of amateur pop singers competed for months to win a recording contract and a very big, very brief burst of publicity.

American Idol was just a recapitulation of the old Star Search...which was in turn a recapitulation of the old Amateur Hour. But that's what makes American Idol so genius in Hollywood terms -- it's doubly or triply derivative, a proven and re-proven formula.

Which in turn makes the producers now rushing to clone American Idol all the hungrier to create their copies of a copy of various copies.

The "Today's Superstar" contest on the Today show -- 4000 contestants, six finalists, one winner -- is an absolute replica of American Idol, except more boring, since there's no audience and no entertainingly mean judge.

Soon we'll have the series Nashville Star, in which dozens of amateur country singers compete to win a recording contract and a very big, very brief burst of publicity.

Other producers are developing a show called Wannabe, in which dozens of amateur actors compete for a role in a movie. And a show called The Next Action Star, in which dozens of amateur actors compete for… etcetera.

But there are still more, more that make you wonder, as we have wondered at TV often these last few years: how far is too far, and how will we know when we get there?

Sony television is developing Human Resources -- in which unemployed schnooks, ordinary people without any special talents, compete to win an ordinary 9-to-5 job.

Then there's The Will, a new reality series due to air on ABC starting sometime next year. In The Will, the friends and family members of a rich person will compete to inherit specific items from the rich person's estate after he or she dies. And certain friends and relatives will get disowned, on television, by a vote of his or her fellow heirs.

And on the FX channel during the next two years, we're going to be able to watch a show called American Candidate. On this show, the contestants will compete to run for president, and the winner will actually run a serious campaign in 2004 for the presidency of the United States. Whether American Candidate turns out to be more Capra-esque or Fellini-esque, we'll have to wait and see. But I know I'm going to be watching.

In this 500-channel age, the TV world is metastasizing before our eyes into a complete parallel universe -- we're now citizens of Entertainment Nation. Proving once and for all, I guess, that "the business of America is show business." Which I think a president of the United States once said.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.

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