10 Times Thunderbirds Was Way Too Dark For Kids TV

By far and away the darkest Thunderbirds storyline occurs in the opening sequence of Thirty Minutes After Noon. It’s a foul looking evening as Thomas Prescott, on his way home to his wife to spend their anniversary together, stops to pick up a hitchhiker.

They enjoy a polite chat, the hitchhiker’s had quite the night of it. His wife is really unwell and his car battery’s gone flat on the way to fetch his doctor. As soon as they pull over the hitchhiker straps something to Thomas’ wrist and pulls a gun on him. He tells him that the device contains a bomb and that the only way to get it off is to go back to work where a key is waiting for him in the top drawer of his cabinet. 

He manages to get to the key in time but doesn’t escape. The bomb goes off, trapping Prescott at the bottom of the lift shaft.

While the second part fractures into a pastiche of spy movies of the era, the opening scene of 'Thirty Minutes After Noon' remains one of the most chilling moments in children’s TV history. The dangerous stranger is an obvious moral tale but seeing someone entirely innocent being forced into an act of terrorism is something which they wouldn't have got away with on prime time in the 1960s.