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.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
Smith was an add-on villain. He was the star of the show. He made it work. He was also reputed to be the gay lover of the guy in the robot, who was named Robot. This turned out not to be true as he was married to the same woman for about sixty years. But, to put a 4um spin on it, he was not gay or British but he was a Russian Jew:
"As Harris was not British, it turns out he also was not gay. He was survived by his wife of 64 years, Gertrude, and a son.
The obituary told me something else I never suspected about him. Jonathan Harris was born Jonathan Charasuchin, "to poor Russian Jewish immigrants." Now Lost in Space starts to get interesting. A Jew is put in the role of saboteur, responsible for the destruction of clean, all-American gentiles. Instead, he turns the show on its head and, rather than become the villain/victim, and possibly subject to some form of frontier justice, he runs away with the show, staying one step ahead of the pogrom by making the others to react to him.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Leo Frank, blood libels, the whole litany of well-worn themes are at work here, like the dark fissures running across Dr. Smith's forehead: malevolence, cupidity, shiftiness. But the Jew, condemned to be an outsider no matter what he does, inverts his fate by turning the Robinsons into wandering gentiles.
This is not the solution to the Jewish Problem that anyone had in mind. It is so unexpected as to be truly visionary.
Star Trek may have had its Jewish actors and given the world the priestly hand sign, but Lost in Space, it turns out, has given a harried people the last laugh."
As for the "Thunderbirds" it was interesting for it's time. I liked Fireball XL-5 better.
Fireball was produced by the same British couple who created Thunderbirds, UFO, Space: 1999.