There remains unending interest in the bizarre story of Natalia Grace, the Ukrainian girl adopted by an American family who then claimed she was actually an adult. The saga starts in 2010 but a similar tale had already been told in 2009’s Orphan, a horror film hinged on a similar twist, itself inspired by the real case of the Estonian imposter Barbora Skrlová. It’s the ghoulish stuff of nightmare, shocking enough to turn Orphan into an unlikely franchise (the second was released in 2022, the third now in the works) and Grace into a tabloid sensation and, easily vilified, hate figure.
But the lurid People.com headlines only told half of the story or barely a third as it turns out, an unfolding series of revelations soon starting to show that things were not what they appeared to be. After a popular, and even more revelatory, docuseries, we now have the inevitable narrative version – the long-read-to-documentary-to-limited-series pipeline remaining robust – but how to tell a story when no one involved is willing to agree on what actually happened? In Hulu’s efficiently watchable eight-parter Good American Family, The Affair and Sunny writer Katie Robbins decides upon a structure that allows for competing perspectives and a shifting timeline.
It’s something that might have seemed bold and unconventional a few years back but it’s now become rather commonplace, most series now picking and playing with time and viewpoint often to the point of maddening confusion. It’s more straightforward and less gimmicky here and allows for a great, darkly funny opening scene as the pristine God-first mom Kristine Barnett (Ellen Pompeo) gives a speech on perfect parenting as police descend to arrest her for child endangerment. Throughout the series, there’s a neat skewering of smug momfluencer culture, gleefully exposing the rot that lies underneath, something that’s been front and centre with recent docs on the Stauffers and the Frankes.
We then rewind to see how Kristine had originally found her footing in the industry, as the mother of an autistic son who had used her own intuition to get him the help he needed, an irresistible feel-good story. But together with her husband, Michael (Mark Duplass), she still feels the ache of something missing, three sons that “need” a sister, who arrives in the form of the Ukrainian seven-year-old Natalia (Imogen Faith Reid, skilled at switching between bad and good as well as old and young), who was born with a form of dwarfism. Something didn’t align with her previous adopted family and the Barnetts fill in fast, transforming their life for a new daughter. Red flags start flying early – unpaid medical bills, a shady agency, odd behaviour – until Kristine starts to feel threatened by Natalia, convinced there’s something more nefarious going on.
Unless one knows the details of the Grace case, it’s best to go in as blind as possible, the show a twisting test of allegiance that challenges who you believe and why you might believe them. As Natalia goes from antagonist to protagonist, it’s no spoiler to say that, despite characters making reference to it, this is not a simple rehash of Orphan. It’s part thriller and satire but mostly a crime drama and there’s a simple pull to its he-said-she-said storytelling, propelling one quite easily into watching the next episode. Yet there’s also an anonymous simplicity to its visual aesthetic too, the direction a little too plain for a story so wild. We’re urged to feel big emotions – shock, anger, repulsion – but we’re left to settle for medium.
The makers are a little torn between feeding the appetite of those eager for sordid specifics and trying to take a position of moral superiority, also affected by a need to avoid litigation (each episode begins with a legal disclaimer). It’s a difficult balance of tone but one that’s just about managed with the final episodes which provide a more sensitive reflection on what’s happened. They’re well-meaning but by the end also a little ungainly, attempts to stuff so much in also leaving so much out, especially the murky details of what happened with Natalia’s next family, led by a standout Christina Hendricks as a magnetic Earth Mother figure. She makes for the perfect antithesis to Pompeo’s colder Live Laugh Love soccer mom, the actor’s only real role since she locked into Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a mostly smart choice as there’s an artificiality to her learned network acting that works well here in a way that it wouldn’t in something more naturalistic, playing someone less affected. Duplass is also convincingly annoying as her spineless loserish husband.
While those who are already passionately steeped in Natalia Grace lore will be those who click most frantically on Good American Family, it will ultimately be of more worth for those less familiar with who she really is. Because those who know will know more than the series has time to tell us and awareness of the story’s twists and turns will reduce a boilerplate true crime series to something even less essential. If those remaining can resist the lure of reading ahead on Wikipedia, then there’s a fittingly good, if never great, series here.
- Good American Family lands on Hulu on Wednesdays in the US and will stream on Disney+ in the UK on 7 May
