Late in Hulu’s new series Good American Family comes a moment of irony that’s become all too familiar in true crime docudramas. The fictionalized Natalia Grace Barnett — at this point in the story a teen, being played by the 27-year-old Imogen Faith Reid — glowingly reads supportive comments from random internet strangers. “I feel so bad I doubted you, Natalia,” one comment reads, “But I guess that’s what the media wanted.”

Ah, yes: the ancient narrative that the media made a complicated situation worse, being proffered by a piece of media that’s currently making it worse.

Good American Family dramatizes the twisted saga of Natalia Grace, a Ukraine-born adoptee who was born in 2003, 1989, or somewhere in between, according to a litany of contradicting stories and court records. The new series’ interminable eight episodes rehash the saga many Americans first learned about in 2019, when her second set of adoptive parents, Michael and Kristine Barnett, gained media attention for adopting and then abandoning her in the US when they moved to Canada without her. The Barnetts publicly claimed that their daughter was an evil, murderous 20-something con artist pretending to be a little girl.

Yes, it’s the plot of the movie Orphan, but in real life. (To be clear, Natalia Grace’s tale did not inspire the 2009 movie, as she was adopted in 2010, but may well have been inspired by it.) The Barnetts’ behavior resulted in ultimately unsuccessful criminal charges of neglect. Though the messy details of this back and forth are recounted for viewers, including the accompanying media spectacle, the Hulu series ultimately does little to justify itself, either as entertainment or as a further examination of an abuse victim whose entire life has been lived under a magnifying glass as a result of her abuse.

Here’s what to know about the saga of Natalia — and why the Hulu docuseries probably isn’t the last time you’ll be hearing her name, even though it probably should be.

Natalia was 6 or 7 — or maybe 8 or 9 — when she was adopted in 2010

By their own telling, Indiana residents Kristine and Michael Barnett and their three sons were an all-American family: Kristine would go on to author a much-lauded book about raising her son Jacob, who is a high-functioning child prodigy. The memoir, The Spark, was so popular it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2013 — but while it details Kristine Barnett’s miraculous job parenting her sons, it reportedly contains no mention whatsoever of the little girl she adopted alongside them.

The Barnetts adopted Natalia in 2010. According to Michael Barnett, they were only given 24 hours by a shady adoption agency to make a decision about adopting her, and were provided very little information about Natalia’s background and medical history. What we know is that Natalia’s birth mother had been born in Latvia and was living in Ukraine at the time of Natalia’s birth, which was listed on Natalia’s birth certificate as September 4, 2003. She placed Natalia in an orphanage. In 2008, at the age of 5, she was brought to the US by Dyan and Gary Ciccone, a New Hampshire couple with ties to an area adoption agency focused on Russian adoptees. What happened is unclear, but Natalia’s unsuccessful placement underscores the often murky and dysfunctional process of adoption, especially international adoptions, which can

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