Trivia

To enhance the starkness of the look of the production, Director Jonathan Miller had Lighting Technician John Treays desaturate the color by thirty percent.

Robert Shaw was cast in the part of King Lear in 1977, with the production to begin in mid 1978. However, he died before production began, and the project got pushed back several years.

Director Jonathan Miller utilized a "board and drapes" approach to the play. All interiors were shot on or near a plain wooden platform, while all exteriors were shot against a cycloramic curtain with dark tarpaulins. As such, although exteriors and interiors were clearly distinguished from one another, both were nonrepresentational.

Jonathan Miller had previously directed a Nottingham Playhouse production of King Lear in 1969, starring Sir Michael Hordern as King Lear and Frank Middlemass as the Fool. In 1975, he remounted that same production for the BBC Play of the Month, a heavily truncated version, which happened to be the BBC's last Shakespeare production prior to the beginning of the Television Shakespeare. During his producership, Miller tried to persuade the BBC to use the Play of the Month production as their King Lear, but they refused, saying a new production had to be done. At the end of the fourth season, Miller's last as producer, his contract stipulated that he still had one production to direct. In-coming Producer Shaun Sutton offered him Love's Labour's Lost, but Miller wanted to do one of the three remaining tragedies; King Lear, Macbeth, or Coriolanus. He had never directed Macbeth or Coriolanus before, but he felt so comfortable with King Lear that he went with it. However, the production was basically the same as his 1969/1975 version, with the same two leading actors, the same costume design, the same lighting, and the same design concept. The only significant difference is that more of the text is used in the latter production.

Part of the long running BBC Television Shakespeare project which ran between 1978 and 1985.