[6] The story focuses on a British family, the Blacketts, who control one of the leading trading companies in colonial-era Singapore, and the son of his business partner, Matthew Webb.

[16] The mansions of Carcosa Seri Negara in Perdana Botanical Gardens in Kuala Lumpur served as the residences of the Blacketts and Mr Webb.

A vintage plane from a museum in a military airbase was used for the arrival of Matthew Webb, and an abandoned town near Kuala Lumpur airport was used for the firefighting scene.

Other locations that doubled for old Singapore included the Royal Selangor Club and Wisma Ekran (Anglo-Oriental Building) in Kuala Lumpur, Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Klang, as well as Georgetown's Chinatown, City Hall, cricket ground and Esplanade, Swettenham Pier, the Lebuh Aceh Mosque Compound, the Thai Pak Koong Temple, and Balik Pulau Rice Field in Penang.

The Guardian gave it two stars, and called the satire "bite-free", saying the humour was "oddly pitched" and "cast between two poles, neither vicious nor silly enough to make sense of telling yet another colonial story from an almost entirely white perspective".

[20] The Independent also gave the series two stars, criticizing the tone and stating, "It can't decide how sharp to be, veering between a Catch-22-style black comedy about the horrors of war and a jolly-old-marriage farce, complete with a relentless big band soundtrack.