Review: In 'Brothers,' Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have fun with a rumor. Or is it?

Good pals Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have made themselves a TV show to play in. In "Brothers," which premiered last Wednesday on Apple TV. In the series, they star as versions of themselves in a story, "based on a true rumor," strung on a real-life, uninvestigated intimation by McConaughey's mother that the two might share a father and McConaughey's expressed interest in someday running to be governor of Texas.

"True Detective" cemented the stars as a duo in the public mind. Here they play opposites: Woody, a self-styled anarchist, the loose-living Oscar; Matthew, thinking about government, the orderly Felix.

We open in Malibu, California, where Woody is attempting to avoid dealing with his older daughter, Olive (Highdee Kuan), who is upset, having broken off her engagement. (That he doesn't understand women is a theme.) Unsure of what to say, he announces he's going to "shoot out to see Matthew," which is to say, drive to Austin, Texas, in his homey hippie bus, painted with wolves and rainbows and images of Che Guevara and Willie Nelson.

But when he arrives, unannounced, to Matthew's ranch, it's with Olive, wife Joy (Brittany Ishibashi) and younger daughter Kai (Oona Yaffe) in tow. Here we meet Matthew's family: wife Val (Natalie Martinez) and, in descending order, teenage son Wyatt (Nolan Almeida), who journals, collects red oak acorns and loves his therapist; grade-school daughter Clara (Ella Grace Helton), who keeps an eye on "the Asian markets" and asks that a check for her school be made out to "cash"; and excitable little guy River (Noah Carganilla). Matthew's mother, Ma Mac (Holland Taylor, having a grand time), will be along after the next paragraph.

However, Matthew is busy trying, and failing, to write a speech for a ceremony honoring his idolized late father, Big Mac. "You need to get thrown off-balance," says Woody, which will produce bad results, then good results, then turn bad before turning good in a completely different way. The friends will be at odds, and then they won't, and so on. This is essentially the rhythm of the series.

As to Ma Mac, Woody finds her drinking her morning coffee and Kahlua (with "barely any vodka"), when she tells him, "I knew your daddy. ... Maybe it's not a total coinky-dink that you and Matthew are always scrapping like brothers. That's all I'm saying."

"Are you saying that possibly Big Mac wasn't Matthew's dad?" Woody asks, incredulous.

"Who said anything like that to you? I think you're confused."

When not concentrating on the bromance, the gubernatorial campaign or Woody's attempt to determine Matthew's parentage, "Brothers" is a classic Dumb Dad sitcom, times two. The wives are smarter, the children more normal.

Though the stars dominate the plot and are fun to watch, it's the kids, wives and sundry minor characters who bring the series to life. Woody's and Matthew's personas are too well established, their personalities too big to surprise you, however bad things might turn. Happily, there's a lot going on around them.

The pilot was scripted by showrunner Lee Eisenberg, from a story by McConaughey, Harrelson and David West Read. You couldn't exactly call it a vanity project — the stars mock their images, self-images and age — but it does have the air of something that was made just because it could be, in a spirit of mutual celebration. Carefully plotted, it also has the quality of being cooked up over shared substances by people sunk low in beanbag chairs. It's silly, but it isn't lazy. Lessons will be learned.