The program is set in the Australian embassy of a fictional South-East Asian country called Ragaan, located half-way up the Malay Peninsula, somewhere between Thailand and Malaysia.
[1] Embassy was created by Grundy Television director Ian Bradley, producer of Prisoner, who first proposed the idea for a diplomatic series during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.
[7] The star of the third series, New Zealand actress Catherine Wilkin, defended the program-makers' approach: 'Even though you obviously get the Western viewpoint of things in this mythical Muslim country, every effort is made to bring the other point of view across as well.
'[8] Although Embassy was not broadcast in Malaysia, its production was one of a series of events in the late 1980s and early 1990s, chiefly involving Australian concerns over human rights and the environment, that in June 1990 led to a temporary freezing of relations between Kuala Lumpur and Canberra.
[12][13] The Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, expressed his government's regret for the offence Embassy had caused, but played down the spat as one of the 'bumps and grinds that occur in regional relations'.