Legend has it that Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are actually half-siblings. Their new show Brothers runs with it, turning the long-standing rumor—which dates back nine years to McConaughey’s mother confessing that she “knew” Harrelson’s dad during one of her divorces—into a jokey comedy.
However, aside from its central “are they or aren’t they” question and the charisma of its headliners, Apple TV’s new series (Sept. 23) is a frustratingly thin affair, putting merely a tepid spin on its central premise. It’s amiable enough to sustain eight half-hour episodes—but just barely.
In Brothers, the True Detective co-stars play fictional versions of themselves—complete with wholly made-up families—although neither stray far from reality. Living in Austin with wife Val (Natalie Martinez) and three children, the Dallas Buyers Club Oscar winner is a suave Southerner who spews folksy pronouncements and, on at least one occasion, quotes his popular Lincoln car commercials.
Woody, meanwhile, is a pot-smoking hippie who cherishes nature, hates air conditioning and hunting, and owns a giant RV whose side is painted with a mural of Mount Rushmore featuring Rosa Parks and Willie Nelson.
Both stars poke fun at themselves in Brothers, whether it’s Matthew suffering jokes about his vanity or Woody agreeing to have his New Age-y ethos depicted as troublesomely kooky. Yet the series (co-created by McConaughey, Harrelson, Lee Eisenberg, and David West Read) lacks a true absurdist instinct until its final few installments, when Skyler Gisondo appears out of nowhere as Jimmy, the former fiancé of Harrelson’s eldest daughter Olive (Highdee Kuan), and promptly begins behaving like the type of ridiculous weirdo the preceding action desperately needed.
Olive’s break-up with Jimmy is the catalyst for Brothers, given that it motivates Woody (an MIA father with a habit of fleeing discomfort and trouble) to take the clan to Texas to vacation with Matthew, who’s presently struggling to write a speech honoring his late father, Big Mac.
Matthew is happy to see his BFF, if aware that his presence will muck up his immediate plans. His intuition is correct, as their first night together devolves into an odyssey involving an impromptu trip to the rodeo, a terrible ride-share experience, and a run-in with a TMZ reporter—all incidents that are cute but not legitimately funny.
Geniality is the consistent tone, even once Matthew’s tough and boozy mother Ma Mac (Holland Taylor) implies to Woody that she had carnal relations with his incarcerated pop. Aside from Gisondo’s scene-stealing turn, Taylor is one of two figures in Brothers who elicit actual laughs, the other being comedian Lisa Gilroy as Gwen, the brutally caustic campaign manager who’s hired by Matthew to help him run for governor of Texas.
That narrative thread, and Woody’s quest to determine whether he and Matthew are biologically connected, are the series’ throughlines, and McConaughey and Harrelson’s rapport is so strong that it often overshadows the fact that their tale is lukewarm, full of episodic distractions that rarely generate humor.
Over the course of its initial season, Brothers has Woody spar with Ma Mac, leading to the former buying a puppy as a way to endear himself to the McConaughey kids and, thus, avoid getting evicted from the premises; Matthew learning that his magnetism isn’t enough to make him a real political contender; and a run-in with police that results in buffoonish violence.
McConaughey and Harrelson are game for goofiness, including matching blue sequined suits (which boast their faces on the back) and cowboy hats. Yet none of their hijinks are more than mildly charming.
Brothers’ root problem is that it hews too closely to reality when its conceit demands a far loopier take. Except for a couple of wacko Jimmy speeches, the show consistently charts the safest route, with Matthew and Woody repeatedly clashing over faux-crazy incidents and then making amends because, you know, they love each other.
The surrounding subplots aren’t better, be it Matthew’s son Wyatt (Nolan Almeida) and Woody’s adopted daughter Kai (Oona Yaffe) slowly falling for each other, or Val suffering insults from Gwen—which, in the final tally, is still more than Woody’s wife Joy (Brittany Ishibashi) gets to do.
From a father-son hunt that goes awry to Matthew and Woody donning “outrageous” costumes to play music at a coffee shop, Brothers’ scenarios seem like they probably sounded better on paper than they turn out to be in practice. It’s not that the series is strained so much as just devoid of comedic verve. Consequently, its saving grace is its snappy pacing and an inherently likable lead duo, with Matthew cast as the more responsible actor and Woody assuming troublemaking duties as his flighty compadre.
There are worse ways to spend one’s entertainment-watching time than with McConaughey and Harrelson, but the number of choice one-liners in these four hours is quite low (a good one: Woody badmouthing Jimmy by saying, “He always has a hot dog at the movies”). There simply isn’t enough zip to the material, and callbacks to McConaughey’s movies (including having him do his chest-thumping routine from The Wolf of Wall Street) don’t pass for wittiness.
The result is a show that coasts on the good vibes of its A-listers (and our feelings about them) instead of concocting a genuine reason for its existence.
As for whether McConaughey and Harrelson are related, Brothers at least has the good sense to provide a (fake) answer. Even then, the predictability of its plotting neuters the impact of that revelation, as do caricatures that grow weaker by the minute; Gwen, for example, becomes less distinct with each passing episode, mainly because she has to carry out basic plot functions rather than be over-the-top mean. Striving to lay the groundwork for additional seasons also doesn’t help, even though Matthew and Woody are an easygoing pair with plenty of chemistry.
In the wake of his tremendous performance in The Rivals of Amziah King, McConaughey reverts back to leaning on his trademark persona in Brothers, and coupled with Harrelson following suit, the effect is underwhelming. Both men can do much more than this, and should, rather than breezing through a saga that’s as insubstantial as the clouds of smoke emanating from Harrelson’s joint-toking mouth.
