Brothers Review: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s Comedy Series Sags with Sitcom Cliches

At the 2026 Emmy Awards, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson were tapped to announce the last award of the night, Outstanding Comedy Series. In a rare turn of events for an awards ceremony, the show was running ahead of schedule, and so the two stars had clearly been told to stretch out their presentation. This led to a rambling, unscripted interaction between the two stars intended to promote the Apple TV show Brothers, but instead raising serious concerns about whether the McConaughey/Harrelson comedy series, starring them as “themselves,” would be a mess.The good news is that Brothers‘s eight episodes aren’t nearly as painful as that three minutes and 41 seconds of awards show flailing were. The bad news is that the first season of the show does still feel a little endless. “Based on a true rumor,” the series explores the true-life possibility that Harrelson and McConaughey aren’t just very close friends, but actual blood relations.We’ll use first names here when referring to the fictional versions of these characters, to avoid any confusion with the actors’ real-life selves. In terms of the facts: Harrelson’s father was famously a convicted contract killer who died in priso...