FAT CHANCE

UK, 1989, 105 minutes, Colour.
John Thaw, Kevin Whately, Maurice Denham, Zoe Wannamaker, James Grout.
Directed by Roy Battersby.

Fat Chance is one of the earliest of the Inspector Morse films. It is set, as usual, in Oxford. The focus is on the appointment of a female deacon and the city's female chaplain. This provides a clash for the more conservative members of the Church of England who are against women's ordination and this kind of appointment. There are the usual complications. John Thaw was developing his character who was to be in films for the next decade. Kevin Whately is Lewis, his assistant.

1. The popularity of the Inspector Morse series. The murders, the mysteries, the characters and motivations? Morse as a character, aloof, alone? Lewis and his ordinariness? The interactions between the two?

2. The Oxford settings, the colleges, the church, gardens, streets?

3. A murder mystery yet a character-driven study, the complexity of motivations?

4. The world of the High Anglican Church? Its ecclesiastical issues? The role of women, sex and gender? Images of God?

5. Victoria, the accident, the examination, her death? The other women and their relationship to Victoria, Dinah, Emma and the others, the issue of the tablets?

6. The contrast with the Oxford dons, Mandeville, Boyd and the issue of communion, the nature of the appointments and the influence wielded?

7. The meetings of the women, the political issues, clerical issues? The clashes with the men? The appointments? The ecclesiastical aspects? The religious experience?

8. The slimming group, Think Thin? The lady pestering Morse? Dinah and her connection?

9. The post-mortem, the forensic evidence, the connection with the Think Thin establishment?

10. Morse, crotchety, his attraction towards Emma, the sequences together, the lies?

11. Lewis, his thorough investigations, the contrast with Morse? The interviews? The authorities?

12. The solution, the motivation, the intricacies of the plot with the Think Thin group, England and America, the ecclesiastical aspects?