A Friend of the Family Season 1 Episodes 1-4 Review: The Utter Audacity of Brother Berchtold

Riding the true crime wave, A Friend of the Family tells the chilling story of the Broberg family and what they went through at the hands of a trusted friend and neighbor.

Based on the documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, the Peacock limited series dramatizes the real events around the multiple kidnappings of Jan Broberg by friend of the family, Bob “Brother B” Berchtold over many years.

The true story is bizarre and disturbing, and the series captures that energy through sobering performances, aesthetic and setting, and the distinct time period of the seventies.

It was a different time back then when a family’s naïveté about these kind of evils being close to home was commonplace. The Brobergs—God-fearing, trusting, mid-western folk—become the ideal target for Bob Berchtold, a sociopath who develops a quick fixation on twelve-year-old Jan.

Season 1 Episode 1, “Horseback Riding in American Falls,” shows the relationships that develop among the Berchtolds and the Brobergs. Bob Berchtold (Jake Lacy), better known as Brother B., plays the long game with the other family, planting seeds immediately upon getting his hooks into them. 

Following the kidnapping begins a tedious account of the first-day waiting game for Jan’s parents, Mary Ann Broberg (Anna Paquin) and Bob Broberg (Colin Hanks), and B.’s wife, Gail Berchtold (Lio Tipton).

The tediousness builds the creepy tension exponentially throughout the next three episodes, over which Lacy has a strangle-hold playing Brother B. as diabolically-sinister as possible. He weasels his way out of every accusation and consequence, and turns the tables onto his victims.

And all with a charming smile that will send a chill down your spine.

Behind that smile is a person who knows they are getting exactly what they want, and there seems to be a thrill in watching his prey suffer. He brainwashes young Jan (Hendrix Yancey) at the most impressionable stage of her life and leaves his wife to gaslight the worried parents with a missing child. 

The events that both lead up to and follow the first kidnapping in 1974, are hard to believe—not only at Bob and Mary Ann’s gullibility, but the audacity of B. to exercise his powers of manipulation so blatantly. The way he tells his wife “See you tonight,” when he plans on being halfway to Mexico with a drugged kidnap victim who also happens to be their good friends’ daughter.

Lacy succeeds in making B. despicable and skin-crawlingly creepy—a predator and a true villain befitting of the spooky season. Moreover, Paquin and Hanks give sympathetic portrayals of the victimized Brobergs as well as context around their reasonings. 

Back then, the concept of “grooming” was not known. On Episode 2, “The Mission,” the FBI agent in charge of the investigation says he’s just learned what a pedophile is moments earlier. 

At the trial on Episode 4, “Articles of Faith,” Mary Ann defends herself, “I’ve never heard of this type of therapy, but there’s a lot of things that I’ve never heard of.”

These performances play into that more innocent time period so well because the early 70s setting is achieved masterfully well. From the costuming to the set dressing to the title graphics, A Friend of the Family, takes its audience right back to that time.

And since it’s so well done, there’s a chance of viewing it with a better understanding of the particular circumstances of the Brobergs’ situation.

Preceding the first episode is an introduction with the real Jan Broberg: “I know it may seem unbelievable, but we lived in a different world back then. I want to tell my family’s story today because so many seem to think that something like this could never happen to them, especially at the hands of someone they know and trust, but it did happen.”

A Friend of the Family Season 1 Episodes 1-4 chronicle that first kidnapping when Jan was twelve. Yancey gives a devastating performance of Jan at this age. The Haunting of Hill House‘s Mckenna Grace will take over for Jan as a teenager on the remaining five episodes. 

What did you think of the first four episodes of A Friend of the Family? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of A Friend of the Family stream Thursdays on Peacock.

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