A Friend of the Family, TV review — the true story of a surreal abduction

As if anticipating the fallout surrounding Netflix’s lurid, and by most accounts, exploitative series about the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a new true-crime drama begins with an extra-narrative message from one of its subjects. In a short, straight-to-camera speech, Jan Broberg — who was abused by a close family friend as a child in the 1970s — clarifies that she wanted to share her wrenching story “because so many seem to think something like this could never happen to them”.

Given Broberg’s personal involvement with the show (she and her mother Mary Ann are named as producers) and her own view of it as an important cautionary tale, A Friend of the Family should be excluded from the cultural debate du jour about the ethics of extracting entertainment from real-life suffering. Or rather, it could perhaps be seen as an example of how this kind of story can be told in a way that feels sensitive and significant — and which crucially avoids sensationalising, even fetishising, the evil it entails.

Which isn’t to say that the Peacock nine-part series is anything but disturbing from the moment when the Brobergs first strike up a friendship with Robert Berchtold (White Lotus’s Jake Lacy), their new neighbour in Pocatello, Idaho. While his fixed smile and unflappable affability seem unnervingly performative to us, the Brobergs quickly see him as “a member of the family”. Why this married father-of-three is more enthusiastic about their family than his own isn’t questioned until it’s too late.

At first Berchtold weaponises his easy-going charm. But soon we see him adopting more insidious ways of manipulating achingly earnest parents Bob (Colin Hanks) and Mary Ann (Anna Paquin) — whose naivety is portrayed as credible if not excusable — and grooming 12-year-old Jan (Hendrix Yancey). After two years of gaining her trust, he drugs her, abducts her to Mexico and convinces her that they’re being monitored by aliens who demand that she complete a secret “mission” with a “male companion” (him). It’s a testament to the show that the surreal nature of this depraved scheme never detracts from the desperately sad fact that Jan continues to believe that Berchtold is looking out for her.

Although there’s mention of the latter’s mental illness, A Friend of the Family is careful not to delve too much into his warped mind at the expense of detailing his effect on those he hurts. Yet it’s hard to deny that Lacy dominates every scene he’s in. His disquieting performance is the show’s greatest asset, but it can also be its biggest distraction. This is, after all, not Berchtold’s story.

★★★★☆

Episodes 1-3 on Peacock from October 7 and on Sky and NOW in the UK; new episodes released weekly

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