Trivia

From this episode on, BBC Shakespeare featured no unique theme music. The opening titles were scored with music composed specifically for the episode, although the new title sequence introduced by Jonathan Miller at the start of season three continued to be used.

During this movie, the battle between the Romans and the Britons is never shown on-screen. All that is seen is a single burning building, intended to indicate the general strife. We never see the defeat of Iachimo (Robert Lindsay), Posthumus (Michael Pennington) sparing him, or Iachimo's reaction. Director Elijah Moshinsky did not want to expunge the political context of the play, but he was not especially interested in the military theme, and so removed most of it, with an aim to focus instead on the personal.

Director Elijah Moshinsky shot the scene of Iachimo (Robert Lindsay) watching the sleeping Imogen (Dame Helen Mirren) in the same way as he shot the scene of Imogen finding Cloten (Paul Jesson) in bed beside her. As Iachimo leaves the room, the camera is at the head of the bed, and as such, Imogen appears upside-down in frame. Later, when she awakens to find the headless Cloten, the scene begins with the camera in the same position, with Imogen once again upside-down. "The inverted images visually bind the perverse experiences, both nightmarish, both sleep related, both lit by one candle."

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

Instead of ancient Britain, it was set in the beginning of the seventeenth century when Shakespeare wrote the play.