The Brothers was a BBC Sunday Evening Drama Series depicting a family running a road haulage firm, a forerunner of American Prime Time Soaps like Dallas. Seven series were produced from 1972 to 1976.
The plot begins when patriarch Robert Hammond dies, leaving behind a widow, three sons (the titular brothers) and his business, Hammond Transport Services. His oldest son, Edward, who has worked with his father in the firm for years, expects to inherit the company, but discovers instead that Robert's will leaves equal shares to him, his younger sons Brian and David, who have no experience in business management, and his secretary and longtime mistress Jennifer Kingsley, with whom he has a secret illegitimate daughter, Barbara.
The four directors attempt to expand the business, facing several obstacles, interference from their mother Mary (Jean Anderson) and takeover threats from rival firms before eventually being purchased by Paul Merroney (pre-Doctor Who Colin Baker). There was also significant focus on the characters' personal lives, including Brian's Awful Wedded Life with his wife Ann, David's relationship with his girlfriend Jill, and Edward and Jennifer falling in love and marrying, much to Mary's chagrin.
Creator and producer Gerard Glaister later revisited the theme in the 1980s with Howards' Way, a more stylised, glamorous take on the same basic premise that moved the action to a group of people attempting sailing-based business ventures.
The Brothers contains examples of:
- A Family Affair: Attempted by Ann, who tries to sleep with her husband's brother at one point. He declines her advances, however.
- Awful Wedded Life: Ann is a shrewish Obnoxious Entitled Housewife who has become bored and does not respect Brian's efforts at providing for the family. She frequently attempts to seduce other men, even her brother-in-law, and succeeds in infidelity halfway through the first series. She leaves him later on and they end up divorced.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Marion, the secretary in the early series, suddenly vanishes midway through series 2. In the next episode, she's replaced by a different secretary whose character is much less developed without explanation or acknowledgement, so this was presumably a last-minute change.
- Cut Short / No Ending: The final episode doesn't resolve the plot, and in fact the last few episodes establish several new storylines. This happened because the show was never formally cancelled, the BBC simply never commissioned an eighth series.
- Deceptive Legacy: Jennifer had previously told Barbara that she was married to her father, who died before she was born. When Robert dies for real, she reveals the truth.
- Family Business: The centre of the show.
- Killed Offscreen: When Gabrielle Drake quit the show between series 4 and 5, her character Jill was killed off offscreen in a car crash.
- Love Father, Love Son: Jennifer has been The Mistress of Robert Hammond for twenty years. She then enters a relationship with his son Edward after he dies. It is implied their attraction may have developed from an observation of Robert and Edward's similarities. Unusually for this trope, they end up getting married. They even try to have a child together, but find out they can't.
- Ms. Fanservice: Jill is sometimes used as this, such as when shown in a bikini lying on a car for an advertising shoot.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The show starts with Robert Hammond's death, and the fallout that follows from his will.
- Sibling Team: Edward, Brian and David have to work together as this courtesy of their father's will, making it an Invoked Trope.
- Tangled Family Tree: Edward marries his late father's mistress, making Barbara both his half-sister and stepdaughter, and thus Jean technically becomes both Barbara's step-grandmother and stepmother (though having never known her biological father Barbara doesn't consider Jean the latter).
- Tell Me About My Father: When Barbara learns who her father is, she immediately wants to learn whatever she can about him from her mother or anyone else who knew him.
- Two-Timing with the Bestie: David has an affair with his girlfriend Jill's flatmate.
