At the same time in Moscow, Guy Burgess also met with Sir Michael Redgrave, who was playing Hamlet, and whom he had known at Cambridge University. A memo from January 9, 1959, declassified in 2014, described their going to a party together and to Burgess' flat, showing that Redgrave had been under surveillance by MI5 for his alleged Communist sympathies for many years.
The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre's tour of Leningrad (December 12-21, 1958) and Moscow (December 24 to January 5, 1959) was the first time a major British theatre company had gone to the Soviet Union. As well as Coral Browne as Gertrude, the production featured Michael Redgrave as Hamlet, Dorothy Tutin as Ophelia, and Mark Dignam as Claudius (the Charles Gray character). When Guy Burgess makes a remark about Laertes' tights, he is referring to a young Edward Woodward. Other members of the cast included Julian Glover, Anthony Nicholls, Dame Eileen Atkins, Sir Ian Holm, and Edward de Souza.
The U. S. film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1985 that An Englishman Abroad "is probably the finest hour of television I've ever seen".
One of the advantages of filming in Dundee was the likelihood of snow, to help give the impression of the Moscow streets. In fact, although almost the whole of Britain was thickly covered in the stuff, with the M6 in the Lake District almost impassable, Dundee escaped, so the BBC had to bring in tons of salt instead.
The film takes place in 1958.