The Embassy: Oct 26

The Embassy is proving to be a mix of colourful stories with a Thailand backdrop, some with emotional lines and others that are just embarrassing tales of bad Aussie tourists.

Hearing how embassy staff react to these is proving to avoid this show descending into sensationalism.

The only thing really lacking is the Australian ambassador himself.

This week, more Aussies are in crisis and our consular team in Bangkok confronts their most emotional case yet: Trudy is called in to help a bereaved family bring their baby daughter home to Australia.

Death is a sad fact of consular work – one Australian dies every three days in Thailand. But 7-month-old Laney’s case pushes Trudy, a mother of two young children, close to the edge.

It is also a week of happy ever after and heartbreak. Diplomat Callum Starr is called on to help Aussie Rob, a fly-in fly-out miner, who thought he’d found true love in Pattaya… until it all went horribly wrong.

But then there’s the fairytale. The consular team see up to fifteen marriages a day between Australian men and Thai women but this is one they don’t often come across. Callum is called on to witness a secret marriage between a young Australian girl from Sydney and a man from a remote Thai village.

21-year-old Emily is deeply in love, passionately committed to 30 year-old Burm and the elephant sanctuary they run together in the jungles south of Chiang Mai.

The romance of Thailand means something very different on a full moon. Young tourists from around the world come to party from dusk till dawn, and drink cocktails out of buckets.

When that’s combined with motorbikes, and no travel insurance, it is a recipe for disaster as backpacker Beau discovers in a frightening brush with death.

There are 15 Australians serving long-term prison sentences for major crimes in jails in Thailand: It’s the duty of the consular team to visit each of them to check on their welfare. Trudy has to visit the notorious “Bangkok Hilton”, to meet with convicted drug trafficker, Steven Pedrotta. To make matters worse, she’s the bearer of bad news.

Sunday, October 26 at 6.30pm on Nine.