Show + tell: Paul Flynn’s top TV
Becoming a family is always life-changing. So what if you’re suddenly parents to three foster kids? New feelgood film Instant Family celebrates the joys – and the struggles
THERE AREN’T MANY TV shows I’d advise watching with a cold flannel and stiff drink. But then there aren’t many tales like the double abduction of Jan Broberg in Abducted In Plain Sight. What initially looks like another of the endless succession of Netflix true crime documentaries soon turns out to be a jaw-dropping exercise in next level macabre.
As soon as Mary Ann Broberg asserts that her neighbourhood of Pocatello, Idaho was the kind of place you left your doors open at all times, you know a monster lurks. It is the first of her succession of breathtaking naiveties. When the family meet Bob Bertchold at church, he quickly inveigles himself into their lives, to no apparent protest, despite warning flares igniting at every turn.
He re-engineers the Broberg family homestead, building a wall between nine-year-old Jan and sister Suzy. In a passage I had to rewind to make sure I was hearing it correctly, Mary Ann and Bob Broberg allow Bertchold to sleep beside their daughter four nights a week, as some crank Mormon pastoral therapy. He makes passes at both Jan’s mother and father, eventually consummated to some degree, to bank sinister bribery capital for his final act: Jan’s double abduction.
During the first, he drugs her and plays her distorted tapes in bed, telling her she has been abducted by aliens and must get pregnant by him in order to save the world. Because she is 12, already indoctrinated by the Bible and the poor, helpless child of uniquely appalling parents, she believes it. Until the advent of her 16th birthday, this is Jan’s life.
Each harrowing part of the story brings with it bewildering questions. The most profoundly upsetting arc is that everyone involved (with the lone exception of a brusque investigating FBI officer) frames the story of Bob Bertchold and Jan Broberg as one of love. The theft of Jan’s childhood, her incarceration and brainwashing can only be explained by the singular acts of hatred that play out across one and a half hours of gruesome, chilling TV.
That Jan can tell the tale is astonishing. That she lives to forgive her family their complete incompetence, not just as parents but as human beings, to share with them the story of her broken, denied childhood, is nothing short of saintly. On Netflix now
This stranger-than-fiction true story of kidnap and an ‘alien abduction’ will leave you aghast…
Inspired by the real-life story of its writer and director Sean Anders, Instant Family is a heart-warming film about the perils and pleasures of fostering. Starring Mark Wahlberg as Pete and Rose Byrne as Ellie, a successful property-developing couple who decide that maybe they would like kids after all – but wouldn’t it be great if they got a head start and adopted a child, conveniently skipping the pregnancy and baby years? The pair are helped along the path to adoption by social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon ( Tig Notaro), who encourage them to attend a foster fair to meet potential foster children. Ellie has no intention of taking on one of the scary teenagers gathered in a huddle, until confronted by 15-year-old Lizzy (Isabela Moner), whose mother is a crack addict in jail. When Pete and Ellie decide to foster Lizzy, they find out she comes with two younger siblings, Juan and Lita. And so the challenges begin, from basketball injuries and traumatic mealtimes to inappropriate behaviour at the school gates – and that’s just the adults! Instant Family has something for every member of the family – its sincere authenticity and acute comedy will warm up frosty February and turn it into feelgood February. Instantly! Instant Family (12A) is out on 14 February