by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
It’s every parent’s worst fear to be faced with the reality that your own child has been abducted without any trace or clues to their whereabouts. But when they are taken by a person you believed to be a close and personal friend, the sense of shock and betrayal becomes too hard to comprehend. That’s what is depicted in A Friend of the Family, a dramatization of the infamous Jan Broberg abduction that shook a small town family in Pocatello, Idaho in 1974.
The story of A Friend of the Family begins with a friendship, which starts as innocently as all friendships begin. Bob and Mary Ann Broberg (by Colin Hanks and Anna Paquin) are referred by their Mormon church bishop to befriend the Berchtold family patriarch and matriarch Bob and Gail (Jake Lacy and Lio Tipton). One afternoon, the Brobergs are invited over to the Berchtold household with all their children to break bread and kindle a relationship. It is this initial meeting that begins a years-long friendship between the two families and the unhealthy obsession that Bob Berchtold – affectionately referred to as “Brother B” – has with the Broberg’s oldest daughter, Jan (played by Hendrix Yancey in the early years, then later by McKenna Grace in the teenage years), who at the time was 10 years old.
The two families begin to become very close with each other — they have dinners together, go on trips together, and on occasion, leave the children in each other’s care while they run errands. One day, after pressuring the Broberg parents to let him take her horseback riding, Bob Berchtold does not come home with Jan when he was supposed to, and after nearly four days of the two being missing, the Brobergs get the FBI involved.
The sheer terror alone of losing your child to a family friend is enough to feel uncomfortable with watching this series, but it takes an even darker turn when you see what Berchtold and Jan were supposedly doing during the kidnapping. Berchtold concocts an entire elaborate lie through recording devices and staged scenes for Jan’s viewing, entailing that she was captured by aliens, convinced that she was a half-alien, and for the sake of saving her family she must procreate with a male “companion” to keep her race alive. Berchtold is there to explain all of this to her, and due to their deep friendship and her trust in him, she believes him completely.
Over the course of the first abduction, we discover how deep Berchtold’s plan went, from the supposed allergy pills he was giving her, which were his way of drugging her, to going even as far as stealing Jan’s birth certificate from Mary Ann’s lock box so that he can use it to establish an on-paper marriage between himself and Jan in Mexico. And when Bob and Mary Ann attempt to take legal action against Berchtold, he is one step ahead of them, using blackmail on each of them from brief sexual affairs he had with both of them prior to the abduction.
The acting of all roles are exceptional to say the very least. Hanks and Paquin play each of these parents with grace and careful attention, and the heartbreaking scenes of each of them as their marriage and faith are tested are wonderful, albeit saddening, to watch. The standouts for this series are of course Lacy and Grace. Lacy is in a phase of his career where he is shedding the “nice guy” image he has played in the past with things like The Office, and is starting to transition himself into an actor who can take on more dramatic roles, like with this and the previous season of The White Lotus. He comes across so charming and innocent when he wants to be, but he can turn on a dime at any given moment and be terrifyingly creepy when his character talks to Jan about their “mission,” as if they are both in some sort of messed up cult of Berchtold’s own creation.
Yancey does a great job of playing the younger version of Jan, but the performance is taken to another level when Grace steps into the mix after time jump. Jan’s commitment to the “mission” brings her to question everyone and everything in her life, and she is forced to only trust Berchtold with her thoughts and feelings. When Grace is on screen, you believe that she believes the unbelievable story that is being fed to her.
The miniseries is well shot, and the production design is spot on, looking like a ‘70s nostalgia trip. However, the series closes with a finale that comes to an almost abrupt end — it would probably have benefited from a little more time spent on seeing the conclusion of the events that transpired to flesh out the story just a little bit more.
Overall, A Friend of the Family is a disturbing and fascinating true story that held my attention throughout its entirety. There are plenty of other mediums that this story was told on, including a Netflix documentary and a podcast, but what kept me around were the performances from all of the actors who play pivotal roles in the miniseries. I don’t see this as a series I would go back to for a rewatch very often, but as a person who knew very little about this story to begin with, I found it incredibly interesting and learned an important lesson about trust, even with people who you think you may know best.
Score: 7/10
A Friend of the Family is currently streaming on Peacock
You can follow Jeff Alan on Instagram, Twitter, and Letterboxd