Soldiering On (Tristram Powell, U.K., 1985) The Talking Heads plays for one person are dialogues with the past but move along in the present, so that there is actually a subtle but excruciating narrative suspense. In the newly widowed Muriel, Stephanie Coles portrays the courage beneath the cardigan, the British female's equivalent of the stiff upper lip. But as the plot thickens, her life measurably thins. Bombarded with little darts of suspicion about her son and her late husband, and so cut off from that to which a widow clings, she never retreats, but determinedly "soldiers on" into a void of her own choosing. Her Big Chance (Giles Foster, U.K., 1985) Julie Walters, the life-giving night nurse of Intensive Care, here plays Lesley, an aspiring star for whom acting is three parts self-delusion. In her monologue she plays all the "parts" of a screamingly demeaning (unbeknownst to her) casting call from which she somehow emerges triumphant. Landing a part in a German exploitation film, Lesley valiantly attempts to give Meaning and Depth to the role even as she sheds her clothes. Lesley is a serious person, and a professional. We know because she told us so. Written by Alan Bennett (Talking Heads series). With Julie Walters. (34 mins)A Cream Cracker Under the Settee (Stuart Burge, U.K., 1985) Her Witheringness, the excellent Thora Hird, plays seventysomething Doris, who in her mania for dusting has fallen and can't get up. The real problem is the dread Zulema, absent villain of the piece-Zulema, who "half-dusts," and moreover thinks Doris would be happier in a Home. Hard evidence against Zulema must be found, and is found, in the eponymous biscuit, by all accounts lying there since before Doris's husband died. Which doesn't stop Doris eating it. It is the madeleine to her swan song.