In a rare feat, A Friend Of The Family actually justifies its lengthy runtime of nine hourlong episodes. Peacock’s series is an alarming, thought-provoking, and vital deep dive into a real story that, on the surface, appears outlandish. Idaho native Jan Broberg was kidnapped twice as a teenager during the ’70s by Robert ‘B’ Berchtold, a close friend of her parents. Skye Borgman’s 2017 documentary Abducted In Plain Sight also tries to unpack Berchtold’s manipulations. Using fake extraterrestrial elements to lure her into a lie, he convinced a 12-year-old Jan that they’re both aliens whose mission is to save their home planet by procreating. It’s as bizarre as it sounds.
When AIPS released on Netflix in 2019, reviews called it “the strangest true crime story” and “too weird to be believed.” All of these reactions are justified. The jaw-dropping and often infuriating AIPS left many questions in its wake. Most important: How in the world did Jan’s parents not press charges or cut off all ties with Berchtold after he ran off with their pre-teen daughter for several days in 1974, thus emboldening him to commit a similar crime two years later?
It’s a complex, heartbreaking case that merits more than a fascinating 90-minute documentary full of shocking information. Enter: A Friend Of The Family, which premieres with four episodes on October 6. Created by Nick Antosca, with the real Jan as a producer, it’s a well-structured detailing of how Berchtold infiltrated and exploited the lives of the entire Broberg clan. He didn’t do it overnight; he gained their trust over a couple of years, and AFOTF devotes much-needed time to establishing these nuances.
While the wild documentary ultimately felt incomplete, the show is an impressive and sobering attempt to understand the lengths of Berchtold’s control over his own wife and the Brobergs. The point of any true-crime drama, ideally, is to offer fresh insights into a story that is already familiar. If it’s mostly a reenactment aided by prosthetics, the impact will fade, no matter how terrific the performances are. (We’re looking at you, Hulu’s Candy and The Girl From Plainville.) Luckily, AFOTF accomplishes this lofty goal.
The subject matter is naturally intense and triggering. After all, it peers into how a charming white man ingratiatingly convinced almost everyone he is innocent (when he so clearly isn’t) and hardly faced any consequences for his vile actions. The show handles disturbing topics sensitively and with aplomb. And the focused script also dissects how disastrous decision-making by Mary Ann (played by a quietly powerful Anna Paquin) and Bob (Colin Hanks) only made things worse while pointing out that, in the end, they were Berchtold’s victims as well.
The credit for AFOTF’s success largely goes to Jake Lacy. The actor is known for his “nice guy” roles in The Office, Girls, and High Fidelity (the douchebag from The White Lotus notwithstanding). He’s aptly cast as Berchtold because he has to twist that affability into something far more sinister. Lacy delivers, with each creepy smile and eye glint hiding his character’s true motives underneath. He offers menacing dialogue like “I could feel you drawing me in” with a grin to a literal child, and it will make you want to throw up in your mouth and shake her out of his grasp through the goddamn screen.
His interactions with Jan (played by Hendrix Yancey at age 12 and Mckenna Grace at age 14) are imbued with a sense of unease right away. The two families connect when Berchtold, his partner Gail (Lio Tipton), and their sons move to Pocatello, only a couple of houses away from the Brobergs. They’re part of the same church, so a bond was inevitable. B fixates on Jan immediately, always finding more ways to spend time with her alone. He sways Mary Ann and Bob with manufactured praise, flirtation (and worse), or by unloading his marriage and mental health problems on them to gain sympathy.
AFOTF explores Berchtold being in therapy for manic depression, but the subplot is sadly abandoned after a couple of episodes, as is the idea of whether his pedophilia is an “affliction” that can be cured. Expanding on these aspects would’ve fleshed out the reasoning for his obsession with Jan. However, the show is more interested in the how than the why. How did he sneak off with her one evening and land in Mexico? How did Gail persuade Mary Ann and Bob not to call the cops the first night Jan went missing? How did he eventually return to the U.S., continue living nearby, and astonishingly have a brief affair with Mary Ann? How did he abduct Jan all over again?
AFOTF doesn’t rush to answer the many questions that pile up. Instead, the slow pace builds tension that delves into Jan’s revolting experiences as a teenager. Berchtold groomed her to such a degree that she never realized the danger she was in at that age. She wholeheartedly believed this trustworthy adult was the “male companion” she had to marry to save the aliens he’d invented to trick her. Both young actors playing Jan are achingly terrific, but Yancey leads most of the six episodes screened for critics, and she portrays the character with tremendous vulnerability. Already a star in the making, Grace takes over the role without missing a beat.
Peacock’s series remains compelling as it draws out the full extent of Berchtold’s psychological abuse. It’s not perfect, but it’s the in-depth treatment the case deserves beyond AIPS and its accompanying podcast. The real Jan and Mary Ann already documented their experiences in a memoir, but their contribution to AFOTF is what cements it as an undoubtedly difficult but unmissable project.