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

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Set us as preferred Good pals Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have made themselves a TV show to play in.In “Brothers,” premiering Wednesday on Apple TV, 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, and the success of that show had as much to do with their double act as the words Nic Pizzolatto wrote for them — though “time is a flat circle” is as much a McConaughey trademark now as “All right, all right, all right.” There as here, they play opposites: Woody, a self-styled anarchist, the loose-living Oscar; Matthew, thinking about government, the orderly Felix.We open in Malibu, 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).

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