It was actually targeted by British media toward an American audience, an attempt to leverage a portion of American entertainment into Britain. This was apparently the same strategy behind the series in the Seventies called "Space 1999" and "UFO". Thunderbirds and these other two series were all produced for a British-American audience by a married British couple in partnership.
They did a live-action remake of Thunderbirds as a movie with Bill Paxton playing the Tracy patriarch and Jonathan Frakes (STNG actor) directing. I had to watch it when it replayed on cable, just for the special effects. I thought it was passable as a remake, like the Lost In Space movie was.
I thought the "Lost in Space" movie sucked - other than for the special effects. I read the comic books series it was based on as a kid - sans the deplorable Evil Scientist Doctor Smith - and it was actually good science fiction for a comic series. The TV show and movie were the usual hollywood shit science fiction played for "Camp" and never taking it as a serious dramatic adventure in an alternate setting - which defines good science fiction. Lucas is about the only one to get it right and what he is doing is "Space Opera" vs. hard Science Fiction. Not that I don't enjoy Space Opera but it is a sub-genre of mainstream science fiction.
As for the "Thunderbirds" it was interesting for it's time. I liked Fireball XL-5 better. Even better was "Scott McLeod - Space Angel" which was actually not bad science fiction despite being a cartoon series aimed at kids. They used the same sort of simplified animation as was used in the "Clutch Cargo" cartoon series - which was more animated "Pulps" from the 30's. The "Space Angel" and "Clutch Cargo" actually had story lines, a plot, and believable dialogue - things absent from modern kids shows.