"Lonely Hours" is one of the hour long episodes where the pace worked. Some, unfortunately, just seemed to be like the half hour episodes...stretched to an hour in length.
When the story begins, a lady (Nancy Kelly) comes to see the room Mrs. Henderson (Gena Rowlands) is offering. At first, things seem just fine but the lady is genuinely odd and Mrs. Henderson begins to wonder about her new boarder....as she seems to show an unnatural amount of attention to her baby. The woman is so unusual that Mrs. Henderson decides to do some investigating and discovers something odd....her boarder has an address book. And, it turns out Mrs. Williams has been visiting other mothers who have many things in common--they all have 7 month-old boys, they all had them at the same hospital and she's given each of these mothers a different identity and different reason for visiting each mother. What's going on here?!
This is a very creepy episode with a nice building sense of impending doom. It's even creepier because there really are cases like Mrs. Williams'...ones where disturbed women have done similar things. Well written, well acted...and with something unusual...an all-female cast.
By the way, although this is an excellent episode, there is one mistake. Mrs. Williams slips some capsules into Mrs. Henderson's coffee and within 5-10 seconds, they have completely dissolved and there is no trace of the pills in the coffee...none. This is just not possible.