A Course Called Ireland (2026) s01e01 Episode Script

1
This programme contains
strong language
Nice meeting you. Thanks so much.
I'm looking for your autograph.
You're looking for
my autograph here?
I would because, you know,
you're famous
- because you were in the
Ghostbusters.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
You see that woman there?
That's me, Margaret.
But, you know, you were the best
person that was in the Ghostbusters.
Well, thank you. That's nice of you.
I met the actor Bill Murray
when I was out shopping.
Oh, that's lovely.
Yeah, I don't mind.
He came to Ireland to see
the most beautiful scenery,
have some fun and play golf
with his friend, Tom.
- Thanks, everybody.
- You know,
Tom once walked around the whole
of Ireland, playing golf
at every single links course.
56 courses. 900 holes.
More than 1,000 miles.
Feckin' eejit!
Do you still do the acting
or anything?
Anyway, Tom wrote a book
about his travels.
The end. It's fantastic.
And Bill, whose ancestors
came from Ireland,
thought it sounded
like a grand idea.
We're looking for the fun,
the craic,
the golf, the beauty.
Wow!
Yikes!
Ireland is a special spot bubbling
out of the ocean, you know?
They wouldn't be walking, of course.
That would be madness.
But they wanted to meet up
with some friends
Oh!
some friends of friends
- Wow!
- and some family.
Goddamn it!
All the while trying
to knock a tiny ball
into a tiny hole
with a big stick.
Like I said, feckin' eejits!
Oh, God, I hit it way too hard.
Now, to be straight with you,
this is not a show about golf.
It's not even really a show
about Bill Murray.
Whoa, whoa!
And half the battle is just
keeping up with the man.
- People!
- Where is he?
- He just took off.
Bill wants to go
and have a two-hour massage.
Two hours?
It's sort of about the Irish.
The ones who stayed
and the ones who left.
But I don't want to be
getting hung up on all that.
Just try to enjoy yourselves.
I think it's a real treat.
And that Bill Murray seems
like a charming sort of man.
Isn't that lovely?
- What do I say?
- Margaret, call me
SHE LAUGHS
- Let's ask for directions.
- Morning!
- Morning.
- Impressive!
Impressive!
Bill Cosby!
- Bill Cosby. What's your name?
- Erin. Are you going golfing?
Oh, yeah, we're going golfing.
You just called me Bill Cosby.
I'm so sorry.
Oh, I have no phone with me.
- I'm disgusted.
- You'll never go
running without your phone again.
Fucking dying. Right, come on.
- Cheers!
- Enjoy your day. I'm
disgusted I don't have my camera.
- Enjoy your run!
- You too.
- You too.
- Enjoy.
- Bye-bye.
- Bye-bye.
Bill Cosby!
Cos I've had people
say Eddie Murphy,
which I No, I had someone
say that once,
and so I use that all the time.
So now when people go,
"You're, you're, um"
and I say, "Eddie Murphy!"
and they go, "Yes!"
- but now I'm Bill Cosby.
- Now you're Bill Cosby.
I can't wait to try it.
Bill Murray, he is. I remember him
from the Ghostbusters.
It's right here, Ray.
But he's been in loads of things,
so he has.
Groundhog Day,
Lost In Translation,
Caddyshack, which, as I think
about it, is about golf anyway.
And all those Wes Anderson films.
Do you know his movies
have taken over $2 billion
in the cinema?
Wouldn't mind a bit of that.
Oh, God, this touches my heart.
This is beautiful.
Tom decided to start the trip
at Old Head, right at the bottom
of the country, where I'm from,
near Cork.
When I was a little girl,
this was all farmland.
People used to walk out here
to the old lighthouse
and gaze out over the ocean
to America.
They turned it into a course
in the late '90s,
and Tom reckons its windy
18 holes are the most dramatic
anywhere in the world.
Wow!
The wind's out of the west.
The first time I came to Ireland,
I felt like I was at a family wake.
It looked like
everyone was my cousin.
It was a shock, a pleasant one.
Just visually and physically, emotionally.
All of it at once.
It hit me that,
"Oh, this is who I am.
"This is where I come from."
So I always look forward
to coming back, you know?
It's just I feel like these
are my guys.
I feel at home.
- All right, Bill, are you ready?
- Maybe.
- Crazy pretty.
- Good luck, golf ball.
The stage was set.
A gorgeous, sunny day.
It doesn't get better than this.
No! No, Lord. No, Lord.
Oh!
There you go.
Wow!
- Wind is off the left.
- Oh, my God.
This is ridiculous, right?
It's tough without a warm-up.
Oh, that's crazy.
We're going to need more golf balls,
it looks like.
Yeah.
I got the rhythm in my body
Made me groove, it made me hot now
Hey ♪
Look at these healthy worms.
Look at them.
They're our friends.
Look how many,
hard-working Irish worms.
They've got the spirit.
Look at that.
That's Grandpa.
- Tom, tell me about Old Head.
- All right.
"The Old Head of Kinsale was simply
"the most spectacular golf course
in the world.
"Not the most classic.
Not the most historic. Spectacular."
Tom and Bill have known each other
for donkey's years, they have.
And when Tom wrote his book
about Ireland,
Bill put a nice little comment
on the front.
Lovely.
"As we crested the hill
on the road to Old Head
"and we all glimpsed
our green playground floating
"in that big blue pond,
$425 felt like a value deal."
That was back then.
How much is it now?
- Probably more.
- Probably more. Yeah.
Oh, man.
- What are you looking at? The rocks?
- I was looking for your ball.
Oh!
150 years ago,
Bill's ancestors headed
across the ocean to America.
The man is Irish
through and through.
98% Irish if you look at his DNA,
which I haven't.
But it says so here in the script.
When we grew up,
we watched Bing Crosby
and Jimmy Cagney.
In Chicago, they dye the river
green on St Patrick's Day,
and that was always
sort of a sense of pride.
We had an Irish mayor.
That was sort of like,
this is kind of who we are.
This is where we come from.
We sing and we laugh
and we're tough.
And that's kind of what it was.
In America or anywhere else,
probably the newest guy
is the worst,
is the lowest, you know?
And when the Irish came,
they were the lowest.
I remember when I joined
the golf course,
I was playing with an elder member
who said,
"You know, it wasn't so long ago
"we wouldn't have accepted
someone like you."
Meaning an Irishman, you know?
Bill and Tom are just two
of 38 million Americans.
Their stories began
in Ireland centuries ago.
Are the Irish Americans
the same as us?
A little bit and a little bit not.
They like to think they are.
But I do know these Americans
still come back in their droves
to stand on the same ground
where their ancestors lived
and see the place
where they came from.
Shit! Give me a ball.
Goddamn it!
Fuck a duck! Oh, God.
God dang it!
- Great shot.
- OK, that's
going to come down, right?
Yeah. See that house right
of the lighthouse there, Bill.
Right of it, yeah.
So back in 2017,
we had Storm Ophelia here.
- Yeah.
- Did you ever hear about that?
The whole country pretty much closed
down for at least three days.
But we had waves crashing up,
coming up as high as that
and broke that window.
- Wow!
- Yeah. During that storm
- Well, here, come here.
Turn around. Get behind me and
show that window way over there.
See that white window with the
frame? Feature on that.
Now, start talking.
Walk with me, tell the story.
We had Storm Ophelia back there
in 2017. We had waves coming up
that high, crashing into it,
and it actually broke that window.
So because the waves were so strong,
all the balls that golfers had hit
into the water over the last few
days
- They came up on the ground?
- came
up. So this, this whole fairway
was absolutely covered
in golf balls.
And the greenkeeper said there was
about four or five balls in the cup.
So there's four or five people
that have played the Old Head
who have a hole in one
but don't know it!
The boys rounded the 18th
in a light local storm
- Go right!
- It's going right.
They're really going right.
There's a lot of wind.
and putted out for the day.
- Tom won
- That was great.
That was fun.
and Tom was good at golf.
But like I said, this is not
really a show about golf.
- I grew into it.
- You did, yeah.
- And this is day one.
You can only imagine
what I'm going to be like
in, like, another 19 days.
Hungover, I'd imagine.
We're going to the pub.
They retreated to the nearby pub,
The Speckled Door,
a local pub where
the caddies hang around,
getting a round after a round.
This is not a show about drinking,
by the way.
Tom doesn't even drink any more.
But him and Bill grew up caddying,
and they know the benefit of a good
debrief in the bar afterwards.
Brian, I don't think I'm giving you
too much credit for your reads.
You realise instead of shooting 90
for six holes, I would have shot 86.
I know, if you'd had a driver off
the first, you would have shot 85.
God, if I'd hit a driver
off the first,
I might have shot in the 70s
for six holes.
Hey, there was a few good shots.
There was a few good shots.
But, Bill, you said you caddied
when you were younger.
Do you think that helped you in life
or did it make you feel different?
Comparing yourself to like,
other famous people
who wouldn't have been involved
in the game?
Do you think it helped you
in that sense?
Well, caddying was the greatest
formal education I ever had.
Yeah, you learned how to play
cards, gamble, smoke cigarettes.
But I learned how to treat people
and how you like to be treated.
- Absolutely.
- Brian and I grew up caddying.
That taught me drama,
that taught me hyperbole,
that taught me bullshitting.
You know, like all important skills.
- Bullshit.
- Right?
- Life lessons.
That's a life lesson.
Yeah. When you're a young guy
or girl,
like, to have that bit of structure
and that bit of training
in later life,
you know, getting out of bed early
in the morning, wearing the uniform.
You know, I never thought of it as
structure.
I always thought of it as like
a, you know,
some sort of a path upwards,
you know?
And I appreciate when people work.
I know what your job is.
I had your job.
You know, I had the job.
When I began caddying,
you got $1.50.
We had nine kids in a house.
You know, I know what it's
like to not have enough money.
It's not that far away, you know?
It's not that far away.
So have you got a caddy story
you'd like to tell?
- Just one from four days ago.
- Four days ago?
- Yeah.
- Give it to me, bro.
- Just raw. Very raw.
Very raw. My golfer,
who's a member here,
took a shit off the 16th tee there
four days ago.
So when you know a lad
on a personal level,
you really get to know him.
- OK.
- Yeah.
That's a story for you.
- That was blunt and to the point.
- Yeah!
I can't do much more
than that, boys.
- Enough of that.
- Yeah, that's very good. Jesus!
I thought we should have stopped
a couple of minutes ago!
All right, let's drive.
See you guys later.
See ya!
They'd lost him.
He's a spontaneous sort of fella,
is Bill.
And just because the team
hadn't got all their shots
didn't mean that Bill
was going to be standing around
waiting for them to catch up.
Bill marching to his own beat.
That's very Irish.
I like that.
You know, we might
have a slight advantage.
I don't know
if I'm being too ambitious.
I often am.
For a man that doesn't claim
to have any ambition.
We could
Oh, shit! Oh, shite!
The top came off.
I'm squeezing this thing out
and the top popped off
from the pressure.
- Bill got excited.
- Well, that's going to get worse.
- What the fuck?
- It's just one of those things,
- you know?
- I have a towel
in my golf bag back there.
I'm going to get to work on this.
Anyway, this gives me
a great amount of relief,
and I recommend this to people.
You don't feel a benefit of it
while you're doing it,
but later, you do.
Bill and Tom were finally
tracked down to the nearby village
of Kinsale.
This is nice.
Tom had booked the two of them
in for dinner
at a restaurant
called The Black Pig.
It's just around the corner.
Then again,
Bill is easily distracted.
Look at that.
Is that who I think it is?
We're going the wrong way.
Sorry, I think I blinked.
Got it the second time.
- Thanks a million.
- You know where The Black Pig is?
I do. It's way down
the other side.
Would you like to come
and visit my ice cream shop?
All right, let's go.
Did you see this?
- Ah! I'm getting nothing, Catherine.
I'm getting nothing.
- Are you not?
Who wants an ice cream cone?
There's going to be ten of them.
Someone's got to be delivery boy.
Oh!
Great.
People!
- Is that the end of it?
- I think so.
OK, thanks, Catherine.
We've got to find The Black Pig.
Will you stand here for a picture,
Bill?
- Good Dairy!
-Good Dairy!
Will we ever get to?
- We'll never get to the fucking Black
Pig.
- We should go to The Pig first.
- You sell handkerchiefs?
- We'll cut up something.
I could supposedly cut up something.
You got a piece of fabric
we could cut up?
- Cut it into squares.
- Squares?
Oh, look at you go. Hold on.
Let's see if it works.
BLOWS HIS NOSE LOUDLY
That's pretty good.
Looks like it works.
- It is pretty good.
- That's pretty good.
Come on.
All right. Do you know
where The Black Pig is?
- Nope.
- If you're not in the picture,
you're not in the picture.
We got everybody?
- Bill Cosby! It's the woman
- Oh, it's Mrs
Yeah, but I have my phone now,
so could I prove this happened?
- OK.
- All dressed up.
- There you go.
- Mr Cosby.
Thanks for that.
They didn't believe it.
This is the lady
that said, "Bill Cosby!"
- I said, "Bill Cosby!"
- We've got to keep moving.
We're getting in trouble.
The Black Pig. There it is.
- Are you hungry, Tom?
- Yeah.
THUNDER RUMBLES
Next morning,
the lads headed into Cobh.
That's Cobh, spelled C-O-B-H.
Cobh.
Never you mind.
Now, listen up,
this is an important place.
Hundreds of thousands
of Irish Americans
return to Ireland every year.
And I hear them saying,
"God Almighty, it's beautiful!
"Why did my relations leave here
in the first place?"
They left because they had to.
From the middle of the 19th century,
Ireland suffered a great hunger.
Millions of Irish men and women
starved to death,
and a million more fled the country,
bound on ships to America
in search of a better life.
The Irish today
are a people separated,
split up around the world.
My great-grandmother was born
on the boat.
That's as far back as we go.
That's landing in America.
What must it have been like
to get on a boat
and to be really tossed
and turned for days
to go away,
to just start a new life?
It must have been
an amazing experience
to get all the way across.
They went anywhere
where they could find work.
They wanted to have lives
for their families.
It's hard for me as an American
to realise what it must
have been to say,
"We've got to pick up and go,
"we've got to try a whole
nother continent."
To live in a place like this,
that's so beautiful and so lovely,
and to have such pain.
And when you can see the water
and the sky and the clouds
and the sun,
and realise all that's given
to you by God,
and then what you get
from your fellow man
can be so wicked,
so incomprehensible.
And what they left behind was
the history, the family history.
You know, I feel like my family
has survived and thrived in that
when we come back, we feel a sense
of pride that we,
you know, our seed came from here
and that, you know, we did OK.
The effects of those times
are still with us today.
Did you know the population
of Ireland
is still lower than it was in 1841?
It's true.
Anyway, enough chatter.
It's my big moment.
- Seen you on the television.
- How are you?
- I'm good, and yourself?
- I'm pretty good.
- Are you visiting Cobh, you are?
- Yes, I am.
- Very nice.
Nice to see you.
Nice to meet you.
Is this your town?
- This is my town, yeah.
- Well, this
is where my ancestors took off from.
- Did they?
- Yeah.
- Are you here for the
day or just for a couple of hours?
We're staying over in Cork,
and we're doing a little show
about travel and golf in Ireland.
- Lovely too. Very nice.
Yes.
- Are you a golfer?
- No.
- Are you a caddie?
- No.
I'd do it for you, though,
if you wanted!
I think I'll take you up on that!
We're going in the sweet shop.
Do you need anything?
- No, no. And thanks for asking me.
- OK, are you sure?
- Yes.
- We'll be in there
for a couple of minutes
if you change your mind.
- Maybe some liquorice?
- Oh, thank you very much.
- All right. See you later.
- See ya!
So what's Dutch liquorice like?
- Oh, that's really hard.
- Yeah.
- Rhubarb and custard.
The Haribo sours are really good.
Show me some sours, kiddo.
Well, hey, there's Margaret.
- Really?
- Yeah!
- She's a doll.
- Yeah.
- Thank you.
Thanks.
- You feel like you need a shave, Tom?
- I wouldn't be against it.
Hello, there.
OK, I just want you to shave me.
- Can I have what he's doing?
- Mm.
- Thank you.
It is really relaxing.
What do you see when you look
in the mirror, Bill?
I have no idea who that person is.
Oh, this is interesting.
- Ready?
- Yeah, I'm ready.
- Small pains, OK?
A small pain?
- Fuck me! That's how small it was.
- LAUGHTER
Wow.
Hi, Margaret.
- I'm looking for your autograph.
- You're looking for my autograph?
I would because, you know,
you're famous,
because you were in
the Ghostbusters.
No need to see this bit again.
On with the show.
In Ireland, you never know
what's around the corner.
And as it happened, just around the
corner, near Ballincurrig
that morning, there was grand old
Irish entertainment to be had.
- 500.
- 500?
- 500.
- Are we on? Are we on?
- Sure.
Come on, boy!
All right, then,
hold your horses now.
Let me take you back a step.
Back in the pub there,
the lads were talking away,
and one of the boys asked Bill
if he was into road bowling.
- What do you call the game?
- Bowling.
I thought you called it
road building.
Bowling.
Basically throwing a ball down the
road and gambling on it.
- It's a metal ball.
- Oh!
But this thing, there was a famous
man called Mick Barry.
He was a famous bowler
and he lofted,
that's what they call it, he lofted
the ball, or bowl, over the bridge.
HORN BLARES
How did he manage that?
- Whoa!
- Over the top!
Anyway, they put him in touch with
some lads who said Bill
and Tom should come along and watch.
A simple game.
Basic rules is you
start at one line.
Every score is different
because you have different shots,
and if you pass your mark, you're
called and you're brought back.
Called means running past your tip.
If you pass your line to there,
the committee can bring you back.
And if you're called
again on the second time,
you go back five more yards.
If the committee call you
the third time
Right, enough of this carry-on.
Basically, you take turns
throwing your ball along the road,
and the first to get to the
end of the road wins.
Got it?
It's a bit of excitement.
Some people love golf,
some people love horse racing,
some people take to road bowling.
This is really fun.
It feels like it's just safely
above the level of criminality.
Where did the game originate?
How long have they been playing it?
So the game began by British
soldiers throwing cannonballs.
- Yeah.
- Well, they had to occupy
themselves while occupying.
At the top of the road,
they all turned around, bowling
downhill, for the women's game.
The favourites Sexton against
the local underdog Collins.
I'm betting on the Collins girl,
cos I'm a Collins.
My mother's a Collins.
No, I don't want the Sexton girl
to be injured or hurt herself
- in the process.
- Ah, they don't.
- I'm not praying for an injury.
Is this Meg?
The Sexton girl had about
40, 50 yards of a lead.
Distance.
And it progressed from that
and it was picked up.
Seven of eight shots there to win,
Sexton winning by
three bowls of odds.
Well, if you get a bowl of odds,
you continue. That can change.
If you get two, probably not.
But if you have three bowls of odds
with six or seven shots to go,
the Collins girl had no
chance of coming back and winning.
Congratulations.
- Thanks very much.
- Thank you very much.
They gave me your championship ball
here. Well done.
Go on, smile.
Well, they'd have to know
about it first.
It may exist.
It may already exist.
You know, there's counties
in Georgia where people eat clay.
The fellas here take road bowling
awful serious
and it gives them a connection
to each other and to the past.
Road bowling is just one of those
little things that never made
the journey across the Atlantic.
So, Bill, who do you reckon would
win between you and Tom?
Who would win this
between me and Tom?
It's a match that people are waiting
for, that's for sure.
Maybe that's why
so many people come back.
Not for the big things
they know about,
but for the little things they never
knew they were missing.
Isn't that lovely?
Oh Oh, no!
The good news is, road bowling
is not the only thing
they can reconnect with.
Ireland has plenty of stories
to tell yet.
Come on, Murray!
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
The boys got back to golfing.
Morning.
How are you?
And to make things even more fun,
they invited one of their friends
to play with them,
Chris O'Dowd.
- On the course?
- Yeah, of course.
Oh, my goodness.