A Course Called Ireland (2026) s01e04 Episode Script

1
- Hello!
- Hello!
- Hello!
See that woman there? The one with
the shiny silver tracksuit,
who looks like she has absolutely
no business on a golf course?
- Hi, Bill.
- I'm Bill.
Yeah, that's me, Joanne McNally.
Are we ready?
I am a comedian from Dublin.
And I met my new best friend
Bill when he taught me
how to play golf during his trip
to Ireland.
Ah!
- Oh, that's much better.
- Isn't it?
Thank you, Bill!
Bill is a friend of a friend.
He'd come to Ireland to
enjoy the scenery
God, this touches my heart.
enjoy the craic
CHEERING
and enjoy the golf
with his buddy Tom.
At this point in the trip, Bill's
birthday was just around the corner.
75
Oh! I'm sorry.
which I'm sure really is just
a number, until it's your number.
Do you think you get
funnier as you get older?
I don't know, I feel funny.
Don't anyone jump overboard.
Maybe it was the milestone,
or maybe there really is
something about this place
that gets you thinking.
Whatever the reason,
it seems that even Bill knew that
this would not be any old birthday.
I had a brand-new story
Brand-new story
When I was coming down to joy
Man, I felt the glory
Felt the glory
When I was coming down to joy
- She was standing there before me
- Standing there before me
- When I was coming down
- When I was coming down ♪
COUGHING
The man in the back,
coughing all over Tom's guitar
solo, that's Joel Murray.
We'll get to him.
Coming down to joy ♪
The lads were winding their way up
the west coast around County Clare
and on up to County Sligo,
somewhere around here.
I really need to get my nails done.
Oh, my. Oh, my.
Look at this.
Coming down to joy. ♪
OK, we don't need You have a
putter? No-one needs one, right?
Nope.
Right, back to Joel.
Ten days into the trip,
the Murrays start multiplying.
Bill's youngest sibling came to
Ireland to help
celebrate his big brother's
birthday.
- Ah.
- All right, we did that.
- Welcome to Enniscrone.
Joel is a famous
actor in his own right.
Fans of Mad Men might recognise him
as Fred Rumsen.
Hey, listen to this!
ZIPPING
It's Mozart.
- Hiya.
- Joel Murray.
Nice to see you. Good to see you.
- Welcome, and happy birthday.
- Thank you very much.
Joel was in for a treat.
Tom had arranged to play
at Enniscrone Golf Course,
recently crowned
Irish Golf Course of the Year.
Well done, Enniscrone.
You must be thrilled!
It's covered in sand dunes,
including the famous
Hill of the Dead.
Locals will tell you that it's
an ancient Viking burial ground.
I've literally no way
of verifying that.
This is sort of a windproof, right?
Oh, hi. I'm sorry, I'm shouting.
I didn't realise there were
people in here. How are you?
Bill bowled in
But I think I might get
a new hat for you.
wrecked the gift shop
There.
ate a sausage sandwich
This is a significant sandwich.
and was presented with a beautiful
picture of himself.
What's that? Uh-huh.
Gosh dang.
Holy cow.
- Well, that's really lovely.
Thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Hey, is someone getting
a picture of THAT?
"The possibility of being hit
by a golf ball is extremely high."
That's great.
Go ahead, Joel. I know you're ready.
- Oh, that's thin.
- Well, that's OK.
- Boom.
- Boom.
Perfect.
When Tom came here for his book
about Ireland's golf courses,
Enniscrone was a highlight,
a reminder of what made him first
fall in love with this country.
Solid, Bill. Really solid.
"This was the one I'd been waiting
for, my original Irish gem.
"Enniscrone was the first course
my father and I played in Ireland.
"I was 14.
"Dad and I snuck
away for an afternoon."
- Oh.
- He's rushing.
- That's trouble.
"Enniscrone rewarded those who
pushed past its modest clubhouse
"and meagre beginnings, treating
us to a wild roller-coaster
"in and out of the dunes."
Oh, that's lost.
The dunes of Enniscrone
are notoriously tricky.
- Lovely.
- But Bill was in fine form.
Maybe three quarters of a century
teaches you to appreciate days
like this.
Tip your waiter.
- Ah!
- Oh!
Or maybe he just really wanted to
beat his brother?
You want to hit it about
200, 220, Joel.
- Uh-huh.
- Right-hand side of the fairway.
- There you go.
- Go.
As a kid?
Well, he was always older, you know.
He's got 12 years on me.
He was always a little goofy.
A little goofy, I'm going
to go with. He was a funny guy.
What kind of club
is that? Is that a 7-wood?
It's a 3-wood.
He's trying to get in your head.
LAUGHTER
The Murrays of Chicago
are your typical large Irish family.
I grew up in a, what you would call,
a small house
for nine children.
And their names are
-
- Ed, Brian, Nancy, Peggy,
Bill, Laura, Andy, John, and Joel.
-
- Ed, Brian, Nancy, Peggy,
Bill, Laura, Andy, John, and Joel.
Ed, Brian, Nancy, Peggy, Bill,
Laura, Andy, John, and Joel.
Nine children. Mother of God!
I mean, I think you learn a lot
about social skills
when you've got to deal with a whole
community in your own home.
A lot of the characters that
ended up on SNL
and stuff, he created in the kitchen
and at the dining room table.
He's become a deity.
I mean they make gold coins
as ball marks with Bill Murray
on 'em, you know?
Nice touch. Nice touch.
- Go on, go on, go on.
- Don't stop!
- Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!
- Close. Nice read.
-Bill
- Huh?
- does fame bring you happiness?
Uh, no.
In a word, no.
It's not easy.
I go through, like, new revelations
all the time about how
to handle it and how to deal
with it.
- Oh, Bill, Bill.
- Beautiful hit.
- There you go.
Could be a greenie.
It's not for everyone,
but it has also brought me
to this place, you know.
For me, the one big positive is
there's a lot of goodwill out
there from people who think,
"Hey, you know what? Your movie made
me laugh
"when I was having a really
lousy time."
I've heard that a lot of times.
And it feels great. It feels great.
- Ah, good ball, Bill.
- Good ball.
But it's not for everyone,
I'll tell you.
And it's not what you expect either.
Oh, get right.
You know, I think sort of famous
people, they can decide that
there's a certain way to play
being famous, you know.
- Yeah, there you go.
- Oh, come on! Go with it.
Well, I'm not very pleasant.
You can see that. But I don't
You know, I think just
being, like, nice-nice,
I don't go for nice-nice.
- Birdie? Eagle?
- Eagle.
Gentlemen, that's a wrap.
- Yeah, baby!
- Wow!
- Ha-ha!
Redemption!
If I were like an ordinary citizen
acting the way I do,
you know, I'd probably have a lot
more cuts and bruises.
All right,
let's make one putt today.
There you go. Almost got it.
- Bill had a lovely day.
- Thank you very much. Well done.
He beat his little brother at sports
and took
a walk around one of the most
stunning courses in the country.
- Well done.
- Good playing.
Good playing today.
Some people celebrate
turning 75 by taking it easy.
Bill's version looked
a little different.
And halfway through the adventure,
Tom had arranged
a trip on a boat to see one of
Ireland's most stunning landmarks.
Ah, it's quite a vessel.
Yes, it is.
Oh, she's rocking.
- Oh, you don't like this?
- I don't like this.
Look at the horizon.
The Cliffs of Moher
are a spectacular 14-kilometre
stretch of sheer sea cliffs.
They are vast and dramatic,
like myself,
and exactly the sort of place
that gets Americans
like Bill and Tom all misty-eyed
about their heritage.
But the Atlantic,
it's like my first boyfriend -
beautiful to look at but once
you're on it, it's not so great.
- They're really all down?
- Yeah.
You talk about a soft Irish day.
Here it is, a soft Irish crew.
Ai-ai-ai.
Are you feeling all right, Tom?
Feeling great.
Holding on to my breakfast.
Well, look at how white his face is.
Oh, my God! Mike, he looks
like he's dead.
Look at that!
That is crazy.
Wow.
A new respect for the ancestors
that came over on a boat.
I wouldn't have made it
out of the harbour.
I'd have been like, "You know,
it's not that bad here, fuck it,
"I'm sticking around."
Did you see this slanted
headland here?
There's actually an old trail
all the way down.
Down that hill right there?
I was wondering about that hill.
Looked like you'd want to climb it.
- What's your name?
- Liam is my name.
How are you doing? Are you dating?
No, I'm single now.
- Yeah.
- Are you beyond hope?
No, you look like you could use
a little help.
- You could make it.
- With you as my
wingman, then I tell you,
I'm getting them,
everyone then, like, so.
Those ladies could be good, right?
- Absolutely.
- Well, I'll ask for both.
- Oh, yeah.
- Our fallback position
will be one or the other.
- Yeah.
- OK.
- Pardon me.
- Hello.
- See that guy over there, Liam?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- He's the boat hand here.
What do you think? There he is.
- He's joyous.
- Single and ready to mingle.
- Ah
- I'm sorry, I'm Bill.
- Amanda.
- Amanda, how are you?
- Karen.
- All right, Karen.
Liam, come here.
Come on, get to work.
Get in there, Liam. Get in there.
In fairness, we have the best man
ever trying to set us up,
I suppose, like.
Well, you can't say no to
Bill Murray.
- No, no.
- You cannot say no to
Bill Murray.
By now Bill had already fixed up
complete strangers
and made friends with half the boat.
I want to throw you over.
Maybe age has taught Bill that
the odd detour often turns out to
be the most interesting bit.
Karen, Amanda,
we're going to drive the boat.
Is that a twitch, or are you
actually driving this thing?
So as you can see,
there's no wheel.
- So this is how you steer.
- Have you got a course
- that you're following here?
- No, the cameraman
is blocking the chart, so I'm just
hoping there's plenty of water
- where we're going.
- That's all right.
- Hey
- Now we're going to
rock the boat,
because we're going to do
a little turnaround here,
because if we keep going this way,
we'll be in Galway.
Sorry to announce that
one of the passengers has
relatives in Galway.
So we're just going to pop over
there for
maybe 45 minutes or so.
Hang on, everyone.
That's good, that's good.
I like that.
So back to the right,
right, right, right.
- We're coming.
- Do you see the two triangles?
- No.
- Orange triangles.
- Orange triangles. Oh, now I do.
- Back to this side.
I'm going for the orange triangles.
So try and aim to this way again.
Turning.
I mean, you can trust me,
but that doesn't mean you should
let me operate the boat.
- Wait, where's the horn?
- That's it there.
BOAT HORN BLARES
We're almost there.
Don't anyone jump overboard.
Well, maybe a couple of you
can jump over.
They all got off the boat.
Some people were sick.
One member of the crew
actually fainted.
Was it the waves or was it
working with Bill?
We'll never, ever know.
We may have to stop for
ice cream now, Tom.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Thank you.
Oh, yeah? Well, that might
be worth trying.
Really?
Knock-knock.
- Hello.
- Our lovely mystic decided
she'd rather not appear on
television,
so her voice has been
altered very subtly.
Hi, what are the prices?
-
- For the tarot cards, my
friend, it is 50 euros, my friend,
and a wish on the crystal ball.
A wish on it?
Yes. You can pull one card.
I got this one.
Yes, you can give it to me,
my friend.
I can read here, my friend.
You have made decisions.
You're going to come to
a set of crossroads.
There is a dark
tunnel in front of you.
- You're going to go through it.
- Mm-hm.
- Things is going to turn bad.
- Oh.
You go through the tunnel.
There is light at the end
of the tunnel.
Yes, there is.
It'll take time.
Yes, it will.
- All right.
- That's the wish, my friend.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
So long.
Thank you.
Well?
Not easy breezy in there.
- No?
- I've got a tough road ahead.
- Do you?
- Yeah.
I could have told you that.
Yeah, but it's going to turn out OK.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
All right.
Finally, it's my turn.
Hello!
- Hello!
- Would have never spotted you
- without your reflector.
- Hi, Bill.
I'm Joanne.
- How's it going? Nice to meet you.
- OK, nice to meet you too.
- I didn't get the fashion memo.
- Pleasure.
- Joel.
- Joel.
- Yeah.
- This looks serious.
- Well, you look good.
Now, you remember at the start
I said I was a comedian
and I'd been hooked up with
Bill by a mutual friend?
Good. Well remembered.
- What's that?
- That's a putter.
Wow.
So Tom and Bill had said
they would show me the ropes
and introduce me to
the beautiful game of golf.
All right, here we are.
OK. You're going to have to teach
me how to do it.
All right, first thing,
so, for your stance,
bend your knees a little
so you feel good and balanced.
- OK?
- Yeah.
- Bend at your hips,
straight back.
- You're there. Feel that?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- Now we get to hit the balls.
- OK.
Almost.
I like the enthusiasm.
Nice and easy.
This is not a performance
for comedic purposes, by the way.
This is genuinely the first time
I've ever held a golf club.
There. OK. Contact was made.
- Wow.
- Nice and easy.
OK.
Look at that! Oh, fully forward.
Bill, do you want to see my vast
improvement?
- Please.
- OK.
- Oh, that's much better.
- Isn't it?
This is where the script tells me
to explain to you
that I am quite a celebrity.
It's incredibly humiliating,
but I am legally obliged to do it.
I sell out arenas
I need to get put on a pig spit
and I host the UK's biggest
comedy podcast.
I am single, independent,
and adventurous.
In short, I am a giant red flag
in a tracksuit.
He's trolling me there behind me.
Which is all to say, I know
absolutely nothing about golf.
- Oh! How about that?
- I heard that.
I have a weird feeling I'm going to
be really good at this.
That is a weird feeling.
LAUGHTER
How's she doing, Tom?
I think she'll have fun.
We'll just go out on, you know,
one of the longest,
most difficult golf courses
in the world and enjoy ourselves.
He's not wrong.
Sligo County Golf Course, or Rosses
Point, sits beneath Benbulbin,
one of the most famous landmarks
in the whole country,
where ancient legend has it,
there's a door to the fairy world.
It was closed the day we went,
because fairies are lazy.
Let's have some fun!
- Woo!
- Oh, good hit.
Thanks, everybody.
Wow.
That's perfect, Tom.
- Yeah, we're off.
- All right.
- We're off.
- All right!
We were off and away.
It's like a little Pope Mobile.
Bill, Tom, and Joel
trying their very best to teach me
the art of golfing.
- That's good.
- Wow.
- No, you have to face
- The other way.
Oh, that's funny.
You're using the wrong
side of the putter.
That was an unexpected pleasure.
We just need to accept that
I don't know what I'm doing.
Sure. Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Is this me?
You know, I don't know where
the hell you are.
I guess you're up there.
I don't know, we get chatting and we
forget about your ball.
As a comedian sitting next to
one of the all-time greats
on the eve of his 75th birthday,
I wondered what all these years
of being Bill Murray had taught him.
Do you, erm, find it?
Like, if you're going around,
you know, like, obviously
you're super-duper famous.
Are you just used to it now
or does it annoy you?
Oh, well, you go through
You know, I've gone through various
passages of how to deal with it.
One thing I
Maybe this can be some help to you,
but I've tried to That's good.
Tried to control it
the way it comes to me, you know,
and that's a complete waste of time.
Bill has spent 50 years living
with celebrity,
media attention, and public
scrutiny.
Oh, what a lousy shot.
That's a lot of life to
get your head around.
I really believe something I read.
It was called the
Theory Of Cell Irritability.
Ah! Shooey!
Which is if you poke a one-celled
animal with a stick,
it will reform into its
regular shape,
but the 10,000th time you do it,
the cell wall collapses
and everything inside of
it explodes.
So that's sort of how I went,
"Oh, OK, that's what I'm like."
It's easy to forget
that beyond the public persona,
Bill's lived an entire life
the rest of us rarely get to see.
Do you have kids?
I have six sons.
Shut up.
- Six sons?
- Yeah.
Wow.
Is it all with the same woman?
Six different women.
Shut up. Is it actually
with six different women?
LAUGHTER
No, two.
- Just two.
- That's actually, as Hollywood goes,
that's pretty good maths.
He's got six sons.
Why is that surprising?
Six boys is a lot.
Isn't it?
Genetically.
What are you learning that you
didn't expect from him?
That he's fertile.
Oh, yes!
- Oh, that's the one!
- Look at that!
That was a beautiful, beautiful hit.
- It was.
- Yes, it was.
Thrilled with myself there now.
Somewhere along the way, I started
to understand the draw of it all.
Success. That's what it's all about.
Yeah.
Golfing. I think I get it.
Oh, my gosh.
My God.
Spend enough time on a golf course
and eventually, even an amateur,
like myself Here we go.
can be fooled into thinking
I belong out there.
Hey, very good.
You're a gifted natural.
I've no idea what my score was.
I think it was a million.
One of the good things about golf
is that the ball always
goes in the hole sooner or
much, much, much, much later.
- Nice.
- Thrilled.
- Nice 2-putt.
- That was a really good 2-putt.
- That's really good. Yeah.
I had a feeling I was going to be
secretly really good at golf.
It's all about the short game.
You've got it right on your
first time.
- I did.
- It's all about the
short game.
- Yeah. I got it in.
Thank you for educating me.
Afterwards, we all headed over to
the estuary to a local spot
where they catch the oysters, or
farm them, breed them, raise them,
I don't know.
There were a LOT of oysters.
So these are getting rinsed, they're
getting hosed down in there, yeah?
Only the dead ones.
What'll happen then is they'll
go into this machine next,
which is a circular grader,
and it'll weigh them by weight.
- Do you like oysters?
- I do not like oysters.
Who? They're a very
They're a very particular taste.
Are you going to do it for TV?
Yeah, of course I'm going to try it.
I will do anything.
Yeah.
- All right.
- All right, Joanne.
- This one's for you.
- OK.
- Is this your first oyster?
- Really?
I've dabbled previously.
It didn't go well.
Isn't there a strategy to this now?
- Is it just down in one?
- It's just down the gullet.
- Just straight down the gullet.
- Chew it.
- Oh, you chew it?
Mm-hm.
And taste the Atlantic.
Mm.
- Mm.
- Oh, man.
- You can taste the Atlantic.
- Really good.
- Wow.
- They're grand.
But if you look at the environment,
you see, that's why they're so good.
Because the mountains, the minerals
from the mountains, Knocknarea,
you've Benbulbin behind you,
and they're flowing into the bay.
And you know Sligo,
the Gaelic name is Sligeach,
which means "abounding in shells
or shelly place".
Woo!
Gin with your oyster?
- So you put a drop of gin
on the oyster?
- Yeah.
Oh, wow! I'm basically just using
the oyster as a mixer.
Mm.
MUFFLED MUMBLING
That was not ideal at all.
That's fucking disgusting. Sorry.
I think I overdid it
on the gin on the second one.
Can we get you a whiskey?
No, I actually DO have to go
back to Dublin now.
And with that, I bowed
out of the Bill and Tom golf tour.
But the next day wasn't just any
day on the itinerary.
It was Bill's birthday.
He requested that everyone be given
the day off to celebrate with him.
So the crew put down the cameras
and filmed on their phones instead.
We're here in the greatest
country in existence.
CHEERING
A salute to all of us
that are working together.
This is a wonderful time.
I think we'll all remember
this as one of the great jobs,
one of the great assignments
we ever had.
Absolutely.
He's my brother Joel!
CHEERING
CHEERING
The next morning,
and everyone was absolutely hanging.
Luckily, it wasn't
a punishing schedule.
Just a spot of fishing on the lake
with their friend, Alan.
- Good morning.
- Hi, how are you?
Oh, great. What a night.
It was a great night.
What was the best part of it?
Uh, I don't know, when the guy got
up on the shoulders singing
the song, that was pretty silly.
Su navi, per mari che io lo so
No, no, non esistono ♪
The sax solo was That was
pretty strong too.
BAKER STREET SAX SOLO
Woo!
There he is. That's the one.
That's the catch and cast.
- It's kind of like golf, Bill,
isn't it?
- Hmm
Well, in golf you know that
there's a cup out there somewhere.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, yeah.
So happy birthday again.
I hope you enjoyed last night.
It was fun. That was really good.
- Great.
- Yeah, that was a good time.
So what is it now, this stage
in life, like what makes you happy?
Yeah, my son said to me, "You know,
you've had a good third quarter."
- Yeah.
- I said, "OK, that sounds good.
"I feel like I've had a good
third quarter."
- So now it's fourth quarter.
- Right.
So we'll see.
I think I probably learned some
things in the third quarter.
Courage. I had a little more
courage.
Right.
You know, I decided
just in the last year or so
that I was going to open my arms
wider, like just have more life.
I've been trying just things that
ordinarily I go like,
"Well, I'm not great at that,
I'm not perfect at that,
- "why would I do that?"
- Yeah, yeah.
I find that, uh, the doing of it is,
especially if you don't know what
you're doing and you're learning,
- it's just a lot more fun.
- Yeah, yeah.
I think I wear this face that says,
"I can't believe I got here."
You know? I think I see it,
I feel it on my face,
like, "How the hell did I end
up here?"
You know, how did I end up here,
you know, in this beautiful spot?
You know, not getting all
emotional about not catching a fish.
- You know, I'm OK.
- Don't. Trust me,
I've been at it all my life.
Just completely secure in
the knowledge that I very
well may not catch a fish today,
but it's not changing me, you know.
Watch out.
Oh, uh-uh-uh-uh.
Invariably.
Alan, where's the closest
fish market?
LAUGHTER