Don’t Overthink Brothers

Brothers’ first two (of eight) episodes are now streaming on Apple TV+.

In a world that includes Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and the MCU’s fading adventures in streaming, it’s quite the achievement that Brothers hovers near the top of the list of TV shows that are impossible to explain without a specific set of pop-culture reference points. Because, boy, is Brothers hard to pitch cold, so contingent it is on the viewer having some affinity for, or at least a basic familiarity with, the personas and shenanigans of the two Hollywood A-listers at its center.

The basic premise is thus: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, great friends in real life, play fictionalized versions of themselves who get into various high jinks against the backdrop of a real-world rumor that Harrelson may be McConaughey’s half-brother. The possibility is a long-running piece of celebrity scuttlebutt that’s probably a bit. By their telling, which dates back to a podcast interview McConaughey gave in 2023, the whole thing stems from what seemed like a spicy joke McConaughey’s mother once made during a family gathering about “knowing” — long pause — Harrelson’s father back in the day. The two actors have since played along, chatting in the press about how they figured out circumstantial details suggesting their parents may indeed have crossed paths, and maybe more. As far as we know, the question has never been truly resolved; McConaughey has resisted a DNA test given what the result might mean for the memory of the father who raised him. Nevertheless, it’s apparently tangible enough lore for Apple TV to package as a series, which is how we ended up with Brothers, a deeply strange and meta-textually dense creation that could, in theory, be interesting as an advancement of the Curb Your Enthusiasm tradition of Hollywood figures running their public personas through a sitcom filter. Alas, Brothers is no evolution in this regard, instead revealing itself as a pedestrian comedy that’s good for an occasional chuckle but significantly less interesting than popping an edible and thinking about the sequence of decision-making that led to its creation.

The series opens with Harrelson decamping with his fictionalized family to McConaughey’s ranch in Austin after the wedding of his oldest daughter, Olive (Highdee Kuan), falls apart. There, he proceeds to annoy the fictional McConaughey and interfere with his ruminations about life, which include contemplating a run for office. As Harrelson continues to intrude on McConaughey’s domestic life, he eventually stumbles on the possibility of their fraternal relation after the fictional McConaughey’s mother, Ma Mac (Holland Taylor), lets a stray memory slip. But all this is mere framing device, pulling this fictional universe together and providing a platform for McConaughey and Harrelson to simultaneously indulge in and take the piss out of their public personas — the former’s southern demigod charm, the latter’s hippie-dippie veganism with a hard edge. Within this structure, the series cycles through sitcom-y premises: Matthew and Woody start a band; Woody tries to horn in on Matthew taking his son out to shoot his first deer; Woody imposes a puppy on the McConaughey family; Woody and Matthew get in trouble with their wives on Valentine’s Day; and so on. 

Brothers initially had Schitt’s Creek veteran David West Read as showrunner before he left the project, with duties taken over by Lee Eisenberg, an Apple TV staple who’s worked on Little America, Stick, and Lessons in Chemistry. Perhaps this transition scuttled the show’s comedic sensibility, because the laughs are generally middling, though if you squint you can see the possibility of something on the frequency of Platonic, which capitalizes on its two A-list leads to build a wonderfully fun hangout-and-high-jinks show. But Platonic’s approach lies in its firm grasp of its leads’ charismas and seeing how far it can push them. Brothers, in contrast, feels distinctly old-school, powering along with the heart of a traditional family-oriented sitcom (albeit one with a profligate volume of cussing) that’s intercut with scenes of McConaughey and Harrelson hamming it up. Would it surprise you to learn that the show deploys a True Detective joke by having Olive, looking to collect material for a DNA test kit, sneak around a bathroom as the theme song to the show’s first season, headlined by McConaughey and Harrelson, plays in the background? “Now who’s the true detective?” she smirks. This is a pretty representative joke for the show, the kind you can see coming from a mile away and hold your breath to elicit a massive groan when it finally arrives.

All this being said, Brothers can be pretty engaging on a galaxy-brain level. If you’re McConaughey, what does it mean to take a joke that may well contain a truth you’re afraid to confront, use it as the foundation for a television show, and play out the fantasy within the safe space of that fiction? Are we watching some bizarre form of celebrity therapy? The layer between reality and fiction within the show is porous yet defined, conjuring the peculiar experience of seeing through the looking glass. Both men’s families are played by actors who superficially match their real-world counterparts. Harrelson and McConaughey’s fictional wives, played by Brittany Ishibashi and Natalie Martinez, respectively, roughly align with their real-world equivalents in physical appearance. Both men have three kids each, both trios faithfully represented in the show with changed names but not without resemblances: The fictional McConaughey’s eldest son, named Wyatt in the Apple TV universe and played by Nolan Almeida, sports the same dark curly hair as his real-life son, Levi. Why does this matter? It doesn’t, really, other than to illustrate the surreal way Brothers creates points of verisimilitude connecting its world and ours. This extends to the series building a side plot around McConaughey’s recurring flirtation with launching a bid for the Texas governorship. Is Brothers a kind of trial balloon? A way to undercut the obvious things people will say about the politically curious actor ahead of an actual run?

The mind wonders, but it’s probably not worth overthinking Brothers too much. The series has its pleasures: Much of it is shot on location in Austin, offering a sense of place that actually feels textured and palpable relative to so many other shows on television right now. An early scene sees McConaughey bopping around Austin, shaking hands and showing his face around town as he settles into the idea of actually running for office; shot cleanly with a modern travelogue’s eye, the sequence effortlessly shows off the city’s dusty, sun-dappled beauty. Harrelson’s shtick can grate, but the series works so much better as a sustained brochure for McConaughey’s God-given charisma. Through ups and downs over the decades, the Texan has emerged as one of his generation’s most interesting actors and continues to produce excellent work, most recently in Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus and Andrew Patterson’s The Rivals of Amziah King. With that kind of cinematic run, I can’t decry him for having a little television fun with Harrelson. The chance to fuck around with your best friend, savor your fame, and get paid for the pleasure? Good for them.