The title music for the show was recorded in Studio 2 at Olympic Studios, London, England.
The dancer in the opening titles was Karen Standley, a secretary and housewife from Berkshire. Her boyfriend worked on Top of the Pops (1964) and was contracted to produce the Tales of the Unexpected titles, so he used her as the dancer, dressed in a white body stocking and tights, and with arms, legs and face painted with white greasepaint. She was briefed to look "as sexy as I could".
A few scenes in the shows were filmed in Norwich.
The series dramatized a selection of Roald Dahl's short stories.
Originally titled "Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected". Dahl would introduce each story, which were dramatizations of his own short stories. However, by the third series they had begun running out of material from Dahl and switched to original scripts by other writers and dropping Dahl's presentation.