I forgot that transparently idiotic latex mask schtick originated with the series.

Landau had an awesome role in Fight The Future (xfile movie). Also something where he had an evil twin. Ah yes, a Columbo episode. He played a tv chef. With an evil twin.

Of course nothing came close to Thunderbirds, fuck yeah!

Thunderbirds. Also, Fireball XL5 and Supercar and Stingray and .........
The single most amazing thing about all of these, without exception, is that a shitty little bunch of puppet operaters from the UK, led by Gerry Abrahams (Anderson) with his wife, Sylvia, could so perfectly recreate an American culture and environment, on a trading estate in Slough. 
British production companies have never done it again.

Gerald (Gerry) Anderson realised that the big money was in selling these astonishingly inexpensive shows to the US. To do this, he recreated American culture with breathtaking skill. My guess is that he thought that US was KOOL!!! Also, 20 years after WW2 when it was obvious that only the US had the dosh to do very expensive things, he was one of the few UK peeps to notice the fact. So scifi about UK space efforts is quaint and dated (even with US stars like Quatermass) whereas Thunderbirds was the future.

It was obviously the inspiration for Team America World Police, and that's all the pedigree I need.

We watched this (MI:DRPO) again on dvd last night. It hasn't acquired a patina.