Brothers

Our Review

The pitch is irresistible and the show mostly wastes it. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play fictionalized versions of themselves in a Texas comedy built on the long-running joke that they might be biological brothers, and for roughly the first two episodes you can feel what David West Read (who left mid-production for Lee Eisenberg) was reaching for: a Curb Your Enthusiasm hangout built on two genuine celebrities testing how far fame lets them go.

What survives is almost all buddy material. Woody arriving at the McConaughey ranch in a psychedelic bus, the two of them disguised as Sunset Strip rocker husks to play a coffee-house set, a rideshare full of strangers recognizing neither of them, these work because the men have forty years of comic timing on each other and are clearly enjoying being ridiculous. Holland Taylor, as McConaughey’s whiskey-voiced mother Ma Mac, walks off with everything she touches, and the subplot where McConaughey flirts with a Texas gubernatorial run is the show at its sharpest, with Lisa Gilroy’s campaign manager landing the only real satirical punches.

The rest is TGIF leftovers: sitcom wives, a deer hunt, a puppy, farce you can see from orbit. Variety’s Daniel Fienberg compared it to Redford and Newman making a movie about how much they loved making Butch Cassidy, and he isn’t wrong. The Austin location photography and the campaign trail are worth more than the family farce surrounding them.

New episodes weekly on Apple TV+. Our score: 6/10. Watch for the buddy scenes and Taylor, skip the sitcom.