Why Anderson shows were so American.

[Technomage]

I always wondered why all the Gerry Anderson shows had such a strong American flavour to them, and now I know – although I had a feeling that this was probably the reason.
One thing I didn’t realise was just how expensive the shows were, but I guess all that attention to detail doesn’t come cheap!

Quote from a BBC interview dated 25 April 2002:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/steve_wright/interview_anderson.shtml

On the shows being so American

We went to great troubles to make them look American and sound American. In fact we even used to print the scripts on American quarter as opposed to A4. The reason for this is because the shows were hugely expensive, [BOLD]in todays money Thunderbirds cost 1 million pounds an episode[/BOLD]. We had to sell them to the States. There were two approaches, one you could say I want to make a show about New Scotland Yard because I want to make British shows, but we've got to sell it to America so I'll put an American detective in charge - I didn't want to do that! What I thought was far better was to make an American programme on location in this country.

 

[Bayleaf48]

Like it Techno

 

[ray gower]

It looks as if Thunderbirds was not American enough when they were shown on Fox in 1994.

They did not trim/edit it. They slashed at it, reducing the hour long shows to thirty minutes, claiming that a/ American Children could not concentrate that long. b/ It had to remove any undesirable habits- violence, smoking, drinking etc.

The result that much of the dialogue had to be redone.

Strangely, the Andersons got away with it with Aunty Beeb and even in Japan where they are even more fastidious.

Even stranger a lot of the scenes cut were put back in again for Fox's Turbocharged Thunderbirds, where they really mucked up the series 'trying to bring it to a modern audience'.

 

[Bayleaf48]

Some of his shows are more American than others happen to be