“A Friend of the Family” premieres exclusively at Peacock on October 6th.
In 2017, Netflix released Abducted in Plain Sight, a true crime documentary about the bizarre double kidnapping of Jan Broberg in the ’70s. Twelve years old at the time, she was the unconscious obsession of close family friend and closet pedophile Robert “B” Berchtold. The doctor revealed the details of what “B” had done to dupe Jan’s entire family into committing his crimes, but something was just missing how someone could achieve what he was doing with such audacity. Author Nick Antosca (Channel Z) must have felt this “how” deeply, as his new Peacock series A Friend of the Family is his dramatic take on the same case. It’s a much more detailed and satisfying look at the machinations Berchtold undertook to orchestrate his plan through masterful observation and manipulation.
Antosca makes some smart decisions from the start. The real Jan Broberg opens the first episode and speaks directly to the audience, who justifies what is to come with the sincerity it deserves. Her framing is an implicit admission that the details of the coming case are bizarre and offbeat, but she lived them, which helps allay any sensationalism. Then, aesthetically, the series goes all out with the 1975 setting, beginning with the classic NBC station identification used at the time. There’s a nice transition straight into the era’s reproduction by cinematographer Celiana Cárdenas, who captures the filmstock look of everything shot in the 70’s. Her shooting style and period-specific color palette make the Broberg family home in Idaho look like an idyllic suburb worthy of a postcard. Production designer John D. Kretschmer amplifies what’s in her lens with pinpoint reproductions of the decade’s popular mustard yellow, brown, and macramé decor that filled most mid-range country homes. There is also the added layer of rigor and piety that reflects the ever-healthy atmosphere of the Brobergs’ Mormon practice.
Patriarch Bob (Colin Hanks) is a florist and sole provider to his supportive wife, Mary Ann (Anna Paquin), and their three children: Jan (Hendrix Yancey), Karen (Mila Harris), and Karen (Maggie Sonnier). As pillars of the community, they welcome Mormons Robert “B” Berchtold (Jake Lacy), his wife Gail (Lio Tipton), and their young sons into their home and hearth. The pilot episode “Horseback Riding in American Falls” shows the two families becoming closely intertwined, with “B” becoming exceptionally close to Jan and Mary Ann. He insults Mary Ann with compliments and absent appreciation to kidnap Jan with ice cream cones and commute to her riding lessons… until the two disappear.
The following episode, “The Mission,” deals with the ordeal of Bob and Mary Ann, stuck in the alien world of trusting “B’s” friendship and love for their family while he disappears with their daughter. Only after the FBI investigates Jan’s disappearance does a brand new word, pedophile, enter her conceptual vocabulary and heighten her concerns. The two must guess after the fact every strange moment they had with “B” and Gail. Meanwhile, “B” and Jan travel together in an RV, where he supplies them with pills and stories about alien abductions. Episode 3, “The Gift of the Tongues,” does the real work, laying out how “B” carried out his multi-pronged approach to earning the trust of every member of the Broberg family with compliments, intimacy, and sexual manipulation. And we see how the Morman bubble of traditional patriarchal rules helped make the women in “B’s” orbit do what he wanted. It’s the strongest of the first three episodes of the premiere and shows, on a micro level, what a calculating sociopath “B” was. He was truly ahead of his time in being able to bend psychology, conservative religion, and the innocence of the Broberg clan to his will.
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Jake Lacy is particularly good at playing creeps. Contrasted with his conspicuous wanker The White Lotus, here Lacy is able to embody the ultimate villainess only through big smiles and soft words. Bob, Mary Ann, Jan and Gail might as well be wet clay in his formidable hands as he gently nudges them all to do his bidding, knowing they are nice people who don’t want to think badly of him. Lacy keeps this facade light and friendly, only slipping his mask once in the third episode to reveal the real monster that lurks. It’s quite an achievement to pull off such a tempered feat, especially considering how bold and bewildering this story is. Kudos to Hendrix Yancey as young Jan, who perfectly captures the awkward innocence of a sheltered 1970s child. She has no cynicism at all, which really shows how horrible and evil it is what “B” is doing to her.
In just three episodes, Antosca and his team create a compelling and methodically detailed framework to explain Berchtold’s outrageous machinations. A story that in other media has been reduced to a sensational display of its fanciest elements becomes a measured and thoughtful exploration of how “B” was able to so effectively destroy good people with good intentions in this series.
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