The actors co-star in a lightly fictionalised meta-comedy about their real-life bromance – and possible sharing of parents. It’s a tasty little treat

The cheek! The indulgence! The privilege! Did anyone, anywhere in 2026, look up from news of a world in flames and say, what we really need now is a meta-comedy where two actors play gently self-satirising fictional versions of themselves?

They did not, and yet here are Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. They once co-starred in the first season of True Detective, one of TV’s darkest and best crime dramas, but otherwise their personae have them as lifelong besties who are both free spirits, unencumbered by the rules of the fame game – not the sort of chaps who would stop and think about how their self-referential comedy bagatelle might be received. In Brothers, they portray themselves as blokes who don’t stop and think, full stop.