Brews Brothers review – Netflix sitcom has promise but little charm

It takes just under 30 seconds in its first episode for Netflix’s Brews Brothers to crack a dildo joke. The setup: Wilhelm “Will” Rodman (Alan Aisenberg) mans the bar at his craft brewery in Van Nuys, California, which he has naively named Rodman XXXtreme. You can see where that is going – within the first five minutes, there are several rod jokes (his bar is frequently mistaken for a porn shop, of course), a wordplay on the meaning of “growler” and a literal shit on the sidewalk. Such is the stasis of Brews Brothers, Netflix’s attempt at a 30-minute, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia-style sitcom about beer-making brothers that revels in the streamer’s freedom from censorship but falls fatally short on charm.

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For a show mostly relying on gross-out humor and antics to work, you need a breezy and hilariously compelling ensemble; Brews Brothers, created and written by Greg Schaffer (That 70s Show) and executive-produced with his brother Jeff Schaffer (creator of The League, executive producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm), has a promising enough premise: a group of wellish-meaning misfits running a craft brewery, that staple of millennials with disposable income. Will is a master beer maker but a business idiot and his brewery is failing, despite (or because of) his loyal staff: chill girl Sarah (Carmen Flood) and punchline device Chuy (Marques Ray), whom Will recruited from the auto body shop down the street. Desperate for help from Will’s “marketing” schemes ($5,000 in “founder’s club” money equals free beer for life, every beer name is an inadvertent sex joke), Sarah calls in Will’s estranged brother, Adam (Mike Castle), for backup.

Unfortunately for them – and us – Adam is a silk vest-wearing, uptight asshole who, at least in the first four episodes, does not move beyond his bit as the most horrific craft beer snob/obnoxious older brother. And despite their not having spoken for years over a silly beer-making fallout, it takes two minutes for Adam and Will to reteam to rescue Rodman’s Brewery. The extended, largely unfunny joke here is that they clash: Will’s a nice-guy slacker who sees beer as the linchpin for a good community hang while Adam is a killjoy who sips only for superior taste. Glasses are broken, customers spurned, opportunities lost and won, piss flows in and out of beer, yet they continue to fail upwards – though of course, that’s a given of the genre, funny or not.

It’s a good idea, in theory – a 30-minute, low-stakes sitcom centered around an extremely popular business craze (“Craft beer is my generation’s Pinkberry,” says Sarah, in one of several lines about millennials definitely not written by a millennial). But it just doesn’t have the underdog charm of staple sitcoms such as The Office, or the unhinged and hilarious offensiveness of It’s Always Sunny, which seems to be the show’s inspiration, though its hijinks usually resort to thwarting Adam’s repulsive effect on customers and working in dick jokes in ways neither original nor particularly entertaining.

Instead, Brews Brothers is often just the cardinal sin of loveable-dope sitcoms: boring. The characters’ one-notes aren’t particularly endearing or funny, so the show just rolls in a circle – Chuy makes a nonsense comment out of context, Will acts confused, Adam is a prick, Sarah chimes in with reason. It appears the show thinks its calling card will be, besides the novel craft brewery setting, a full tilt into dick jokes and at least one bodily fluids plot line an episode. Which, to be clear, can be funny when deployed unexpectedly, or with irony, or with an absurd punch. A play on the name Rodman in the middle of family fight? Sure, maybe. A bit on drawing penises at a brewery run by two squabbling, manchild brothers? Yeah, OK.

That being said, Brews Brothers drops at an unprecedentedly good time for streaming, with millions sequestered at home, and everyone has their own taste when it comes to easy background TV. There’s an ocean of content out there, and this show never aims for critical praise – Adam may protest against people’s enthusiasm for chugging beer, thus washing away the subtleties of the craft with crass volume, but there’s a reason people are drawn to onslaught as enjoyment. All of which is to say: Brews Brothers doesn’t strive to break the immature humor mold. We all know a clever slacker – this one just thinks it’s more clever than it is.

• Brews Brothers is available on Netflix from 10 April