Following two decades as Grey’s Anatomy’s Dr. Meredith Grey, Ellen Pompeo returns to TV with a doozy of a role. She plays Kristine Barnett, the woman who, along with her husband Michael (Mark Duplass), adopted a young girl named Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid) and, shortly thereafter, began claiming that she was actually an adult posing as a child—and a homicidal, sexually deviant sociopath who wanted to have sex with Michael and kill her.

Katie Robbins’ based-on-real-events Hulu limited series, which premieres Mar. 19, is just about the most tabloid-y story ever. It’s so full of conflicting theories and wild accusations that each episode begins with a legal disclaimer indicting that it’s based on “multiple conflicting points of view, and does not intend to suggest that any particular allegation is the whole truth.” It’s a mad and messy saga recounted from dueling perspectives—both of which are nothing shy of outrageous.

Covering much of the ground already tilled by ID’s three docuseries on the subject, the tawdry and tragic Good American Family begins with Kristine’s arrest at a stop on her book-promotion tour before flashing back to Fall 2010 to present Kristine and Michael’s version of their maiden encounter with Natalia.

Already parents to three adopted sons—the oldest of which, Jacob (Aias Dalman), is a child prodigy whose success is touted as the byproduct of Kristine’s peerless maternal skills—Kristine and Michael find their hopes for a daughter dashed when an adoption falls through.

Fortuitously, the couple are contacted by South Carolina’s First Path Adoptions, which informs them that they have a seven-year-old Ukrainian girl named Natalia who might be a perfect addition to their family. Despite the shadiness of this outfit and their procedures (including demanding $7,000 to reimburse Natalia’s prior guardians for surgeries), they go through with the process and bring Natalia back to their Indiana home.

Imogen Faith Reid. / Ser Baffo/Disney

Getting around with the aid of a walker, Natalia is a disabled kid suffering from a rare form of dwarfism, and Good American Family depicts Michael as sincerely wanting her as a daughter, and Kristine as a self-styled super-mom whose interest in Natalia was debatably genuine.

In the series’ initial chapters, Pompeo plays Kristine as a careerist whose affection for Natalia exists side-by-side with her ambition, which is epitomized by her eagerness to use Jacob as a prop for her own self-aggrandizing plans for a rec center, book deal, and more. It’s a performance that maintains just enough early ambiguity to suggest that Kristine isn’t only a selfish striver, and that impression is amplified by her and Michael’s subsequent ordeal, with domestic bliss quickly souring thanks to Natalia’s violence, disobedience, manipulations, and lies.

Before long, Good American Family is chockablock with craziness: Natalia appearing at the foot of Kristine’s bed wielding a knife in the dead of night; Natalia cozying up to Michael as a way of sowing dissension between her new parents; Natalia beheading one of her siblings’ stuffed animals; the revelations that Natalia’s medical records are redacted, her immigration papers feature a picture of a different person, and First Path being suspected of forging birth certificates; and Kristine’s discovery that Natalia has pubic hair and is hiding bloody socks in her closet, implying that she’s menstruating.

Mark Duplass, Imogen Faith Reid, abd Ellen Pompeo. / Ser Baffo/Disney

All of this makes Kristine think that Natalia isn’t seven—she’s a grown-up pretending to be an adolescent to scam them out of money and medical care. Moreover, she’s a danger, chiefly to Kristine, who swiftly accuses Natalia of sabotaging her career and trying to poison and electrocute her.

If this sounds a lot like the movie Orphan, it did to Kristine as well, who in Good American Family hears about the thriller and becomes frightened that Natalia might be a killer (versus the later inference that she was inspired by the Hollywood movie to devise her anti-Natalia narrative).

Kristine is supported by her best friend Val (Sarayu Blue), her sons’ pediatrician, and loyal Michael, whom Duplass embodies as a cheerful and corny paterfamilias whose desperate desire to be cool (to his kids) and sexy (to his wife) is almost as excruciating as his sense of humor. Duplass certainly captures Michael’s off-putting personality, but his effectively unbearable performance still seems to exist in a slightly different show than Pompeo’s turn, and the disconnect between the headliners is never fully reconciled.

In response to their suspicions, Kristine and Michael petition the court to re-age Natalia so she’s officially 22, after which—as her legal guardian—they dump her in an apartment to fend for herself. This leads to horrific neglect and trauma for Natalia, whose POV drives the series’ middle installments and turns the tables on the material’s slant; whereas at outset Natalia is cast as a potential psychopath, she’s now shown to be a helpless, mistreated, pitiable individual.

Mark Duplass and Ellen Pompeo. / Ser Baffo/Disney

Though she doesn’t resemble the real Natalia, Reid (who’s 27 years old) makes the protagonist simultaneously shady and sympathetic. The latter grows more pronounced as she struggles to survive on her own and is ultimately taken in by Cynthia Mans (Christina Hendricks), a religious woman with numerous adopted children whose interests—like those of everyone else in Natalia’s orbit—aren’t purely altruistic.

Good American Family has it every which way and with maximum melodrama, and if that tone often renders the proceedings sensational, it’s nonetheless true to life.

Ellen Pompeo. / Ser Baffo/Disney

Kristine and Michael cling to their legal guardianship for years, fearing that if Natalia is re-aged, they’ll face heinous child abuse and abandonment charges. Still, the duo’s bitter divorce complicates their attempts to avoid prosecution. The series concludes with a heated criminal trial in which Natalia and her team—assembled in part by crusading detective Brandon Drysdale (Dulé Hill)—attempt to correct her birth date records at the same time that they hold Kristine and Michael responsible for their actions.

There’s no easy-bake resolution to this wackadoo nightmare, and yet Robbins does take a stand, siding with Natalia and against Kristine, who’s eventually portrayed as a cruel and scheming monster who, realizing she couldn’t transform Natalia as she had Jacob, threw her away in the most devious manner imaginable. Pompeo’s mother remains haughty and defensive to the end, her steeliness contradicting her claims (to everyone, including us via narration) that she’s the “saint” everyone believes her to be. Commanding and cunning, she’s the scary witch of this demented real-life fairy tale.