A Course Called Ireland (2026) s01e05 Episode Script

1
There was something about seeing
that oyster washing machine,
and it felt like all those
oysters were citizens somehow,
and I was one of them, you know?
All those oysters were just getting,
you know,
rinsed and tumbled and separated
and jostled and woken up, shaken up.
And eventually you're going
to be, like, a meal for somebody.
That's kind of what it feels like
you're supposed to do everywhere.
Let the
you know, let the forces just
sort of, like,
polish the rough edges
and pierce the centre.
You see that man there?
That's me, Eddie.
I met Bill Murray when he stopped
in my shop
- You like this?
- Ah,
that looks well on you, so it does.
- Yeah.
- on a trip around Ireland.
Leave it on, leave it on
till I get a photograph.
Oh, OK.
He'd come to play golf
That's where you want to hit it.
meet up with friends
and enjoy the craic.
THEY LAUGH
But his younger brother Joel
had joined the trip.
They'd even celebrated
Bill's birthday together.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
A salute to all of us
that are working together.
This is a wonderful time.
I think I wear this face that says,
"I can't believe I got here.
"How the hell did I end up here?"
You know?
By now the lads hadn't
stopped moving for nearly two weeks,
filming and meeting the people.
- The people.
- The people.
- The people.
- All the people.
- All the people.
- Thanks, man.
But just two days
after his 75th birthday
-
- OK, Bill, we're good.
- Bill awoke tired and irritable,
and it was clear he wasn't much
in the mood for the cameras.
Fucking bringing these people.
Stay away from those people.
Stay away from them.
All they want to do is, like
Good?
Jesus God Almighty.
The plan was to go surfing at nearby
Enniscrone Beach,
but Bill first wanted
to see the hotel's birds of prey.
- This is Phantom.
- Phantom.
- Phantom.
Phantom is a peregrine falcon.
He's the fastest animal
on the planet.
Whoa! Hey, friend. How are you
doing?
And he should just come
down with us, basically.
Let's go.
I'll take the back route.
Oh, all right. Where's Bill?
I hope one of the owls
didn't get him.
-
- Don't fancy a surf?
- No.
OK.
By this point, they'd
been joined by another Murray,
his brother Johnny,
who'd just flown in that morning.
I'm not going in.
You're going in. He's going in.
- You're not going?
- Go on out!
- Are you wearing a wet suit?
- I'm not going in.
- You're not going in?
- What?
- No, it's just me and you,
Johnny.
-Where's Bill?
- Bill who?
- You mean the coward?
Bill the coward?
- He's not here.
- If you hadn't noticed,
he's not here.
- Drinking coffee.
Yeah. Hot tea and scones,
and wishing they were brave enough
to surf.
Wasn't part of the deal that you
would do it if Bill was doing it?
That's what I understood, yeah.
Has Bill always been like this?
Has he always just marched to his
own beat,
does what he feels like
in the moment?
Bill is Bill.
They broke the mould with that one.
There's no-one else
exactly like him.
He's a funny guy.
And sometimes odd, too.
HE CHUCKLES
Some places
I think that means the same thing.
But, yeah, he's funny, he's odd,
he's different. He's different.
- He keeps it interesting, though.
- He keeps it interesting, yeah.
Yes.
Always interesting.
What do you say,
shall we do this thing?
Yeah, let's fucking do this.
Fantasia on a Theme by
Thomas Tallis by Bela Banfalvi
- Job done.
- Good day.
And Johnny said,
"I'm getting the hell out of here."
It just reminds me how
much I love golf.
THEY LAUGH
- Looks exhausting being Bill Murray.
- Yeah. Yeah, from my perspective,
it seems the same as well.
And I'm just always impressed
how well he handles it.
I mean, I've no idea what it's
really like to be Bill Murray,
but, still, at the end of the day,
you've got to be tired.
You've got to be tired.
I mean, there probably aren't
that many places
where you can escape
that kind of noise.
But a big field where you're only
with three other people
at any given time,
that's probably a real gift.
Out here,
no-one really cares who you are.
Everybody seems
to want a Bill Murray moment.
What do you think those
people get out of it?
What do you think they
want from him?
I think the Bill Murray that they've
come to know
is funny, charming, likeable.
He has that he's that person you
want to have a beer with,
someone that you'd get along with,
someone that would make you laugh,
you know? So I think he's
just incredibly charismatic
in all the roles that he's played, right?
You know, what Bill Murray do
you have in your imagination?
Like, what role? I don't know,
like
But all those roles have something
in common.
They're just incredibly likeable.
And he comes off as large,
and funny,
and someone
that you'd want to spend time with.
And then you see him in real life
and you want to suddenly spend time
with him.
And people generally try to do that.
Will you stand here for a picture,
Bill?
I know you're famous because you
were in the Ghostbusters.
- Sure, OK. Yeah.
- Give me 15 seconds of your time.
Thank you very much.
Will you stand here for a picture,
Bill?
I know you're famous because you're
in the Ghostbusters.
- Sure, OK. Yeah.
- 15 seconds of your time.
Thank you very much.
Will you stand here for a picture,
Bill?
I know you're famous because you're
in the Ghostbusters.
- Sure. OK.
- 15 seconds of your time.
I just wanted to quickly ask you
a question.
Will you stand here for a picture,
Bill?
I know you're famous because you
were in the Ghostbusters.
- Can you walk through from this side?
- 15 seconds of your time.
Hi. Sure, OK.
15 seconds of your time.
It'd be nice
if you were looking away from us,
so we'd just get the back
of your head.
Just do a quick read. We're going
to do a quick couple of shots
of just you walking. Can we do one
shot first, just walking up here?
- I heard that.
- Let's quickly ask you
one quick question.
- Can I just get you here
like this?
- Chaos.
Just whilst we're
Just carry on walking.
One more thing. One more thing.
It'd be nice to get a little
shot here.
Every day at the end there's more,
there's more.
Bill? Whenever you're ready, Bill.
Don't talk like that, OK?
I don't like that.
It's not nice.
On the way through Sligo,
they stopped at Drumcliffe
Churchyard
in the shadow of Benbulbin's peak
to pay their respects at
the grave of the great Irish poet
WB Yeats.
- All right, let me try this one.
-You go for it.
"In a field by the river, my love
and I did stand.
"And on my leaning shoulder
she laid her snow-white hand.
"She bid me take life easy
"as the grass grows on the weirs.
"But I was young and foolish,
"and now am full of tears."
A Cradle Song.
"The angels are stooping
above your bed.
"They weary of trooping
with the whimpering dead.
"God laughing in heaven
to see you so good.
"The Sailing Seven are gay
with his mood.
"I sigh that kiss you
"For I must own
that I shall miss you
"When you have grown."
That one stings a little.
Yeah.
That one stings.
Phew, very good.
Thank you.
Yeah.
- How are you?
- What's happening?
- How are you, Bill?
- How are you?
- Nice to see you. Great.
How are you?
Oh, no, we're in trouble.
All right, here we go.
- Here we go!
- OK.
This is going to be good stuff.
-This is where I come in.
- Good morning!
- Hello there!
- Tom Coyne.
Great to be back!
I was working with my grandson,
Conor,
when Bill came to pay
us a visit with
an entire television crew in tow.
Hey, easy on that grip, will you?
You big weaver!
-Grab that
- Let go my hand!
How's it going?
How's everything going?
- Going good. Going good.
- Great.
- Yeah. There's grandson
- Conor.
- Hey, Conor.
- Yeah.
How big are you going to get, man?
How tall are you going to get?
Let me hit you in the stomach,
toughen you up a little bit.
Just practice.
LAUGHTER
Well, there's not a lot there to
hit.
I need a jacket
like Tom got last time.
- Tom got a beautiful coat last time.
- Eddie, I'm still wearing my jacket.
- Oh, you've raised the prices, Eddie.
Oh, no!
- Oh, you did, Eddie.
LAUGHTER
You raised all the prices, Eddie.
No, no, no!
Aw. Let's go to Magee's, come on.
You pay more there.
THEY LAUGH
Wow, look at that!
- All small fittings.
- Those are miniatures.
What, have you got the fairies
and the leprechauns shopping in
here? Holy cow!
Wow, look at that! Wow!
I've been weaving
since I was 16 years old.
These days, there aren't many
of us master handweavers left
in Ireland,
and I could well be the last
generation to do it for a living.
Is Conor going to carry it on?
Conor's just graduated
from his master's
in Mechanical Engineering and he'll
do a better job.
HE LAUGHS
Well, who are you going to
hand this on to?
I have five sons and three
daughters, and all have better jobs.
Who needs anything?
Do you need socks?
- Do you need socks?
- No, I'm good,
thank you.
- Do you need a hat?
- Socks, a scarf?
- I'm going to buy
some socks.
- Yeah. What do you need?
There's a mirror over there.
So this might be you, you know?
And that fits you.
- What do you think?
- Yeah.
- You like this?
Oh, that looks well on you,
so it does. Yeah.
Look at that.
These are smart, right?
It's really good.
As Tom and Bill shopped,
the Murray brothers found other ways
to occupy their time.
- That is a good one.
- I think it's too early for Guinness.
HE LAUGHS
Very happy to be in Ireland.
I don't know, something about it,
it feels so right,
- and everybody has been so nice.
- What's up with that?
- I don't know. I could live here.
- Yeah, I hear that a lot.
- It's my inner voice saying
that.
- "You should live here."
Yes. "Come home."
It's all been good.
We know each other well enough
to know, you know?
- Billy might be a little bit late.
- And then next thing you know,
he's asleep.
And you can't pry that remote
control out of his sleeping hand,
it's amazing.
Well, you've lived
with him a lot more than I have.
He's been famous for, like, 50
years, so it's kind of
- Yeah, it's my brother.
- But some people,
some people being some friends
of Bill, said,
"You never want to work with
family."
But we've had good luck working
with family.
Not crazy-successful,
but it's been fun.
I can deal with it.
Sit down, you big doof, come on.
- All right.
- So, you wanted to talk to me?
- Well, yes, sir.
- For the Murrays,
working together really
was just another excuse
to spend time together.
But I've been dating your daughter,
Judy, for six months now, and it's
been
- You want to marry my daughter?
- Back in the '90s,
that even brought them here,
performing at
the Kilkenny Comedy Festival.
- I don't like you one bit, John.
- LAUGHTER
I'm kidding you, I'm kidding you!
But the family had its share
of hard knocks.
Their father, Edward, died suddenly
when Bill was just 17.
After that,
childhood didn't last much longer.
The older kids talk about there
being two families,
that it's like AD and BC,
but before Dad and after Dad, you
know, died.
My father died when I was five.
You were nine. And Mom
was a little bit more lenient.
She kind of had seen it all by
the time we came along.
The boys started caddying
to help their mother pay the bills.
What started as necessity
over time became tradition.
To this day, it's on the golf course
that the brothers
find their way back to each other.
Golf is the glue, you know, that
kind of keeps the family together.
There you go. Yeah.
Mm.
That is good coffee.
It's a good glass, too, huh?
We'll steal those.
That's my glass now.
It'll look good in my suitcase.
Uh-oh, here comes the rest of the
Murrays.
Here's Johnny right here.
This is the guy.
- You had some good hats.
- Oh, yes.
Good morning.
You've got to have a hat
to play golf in.
That's pretty good.
All right, how are we doing?
- Receipts.
- Thanks a lot.
What a hat!
- It's nice.
- Are we going golfing now?
- We're going golfing!
Next up was tiny Cruit Island,
off the coast of Donegal
in the far northwest of the country.
The most remote golf course
in all of Ireland.
- All right, Cruit Island.
- How many minutes?
- 48 minutes.
- 48 minutes.
Did you guys play a lot
together growing up,
or was there too much of an
age difference?
- There was a big age difference.
- Both.
- There was that.
We didn't start playing
together much
until we were adults.
The older brothers used to play
with Dad.
And they actually bought him
a set of clubs at one point.
Yeah, he had a nice set of clubs.
He had some tourney irons
and some Walter Hagen woods
that were really wonderful.
What happened to those?
- Yeah, where are the clubs?
- They were still
in the garage last time we checked,
but the garage is gone.
- I'm proposing a match today.
- A match, OK.
I'm proposing a match of
Murrays against the lone Coyne.
- Oh.
- Oh.
- What would you say to that?
Three against one,
your best ball against mine.
Well, Tom, we are now adversaries.
Years ago, the people
of Cruit wanted
a golf course
so badly they persuaded
the local bishop to give them
the land.
Then they built it themselves.
- Wow, we are really getting out here.
- Here we are.
Mind you, in those days, the only
way onto the island was on foot
at low tide.
Look at how gorgeous
it is out there.
-Oh, my God!
- Look at this,
this is crazy!
- Mm-hm.
- Nailed it.
- All right!
- Good job.
I'm childproof, Tom.
That's not bad.
- I'm trying, Johnny.
- Oh, this happened to Bill yesterday.
I don't know why it's on child lock.
Sorry.
- Ah.
- Oh, yeah!
Before teeing off,
they all headed to the clubhouse
for a pre-match pint.
We're going to the best
clubhouse bar in Ireland.
Pardon me. So you've got
Golfer's Journals,
then you got bourbons and whiskies.
Yeah, I can think of worse ways to
spend a sunny day.
I've heard of sharing a bottle
before, but never a bottle
- Check that out.
-What is that, Tom?
What is this?
I'll tell you. It looks
like it's never been cracked.
LAUGHTER
Wait a second. Bargain? Bargain
copy?
No, no, it's so cool to come
back here and see this here.
And there's Bill Murray
on the cover, and then
for both of us to come back here
and play golf together,
it's very humbling.
It's very, very kind.
Your book has brought a lot
of visitors.
Almost all the Americans
that come always say
that it was your book
that brought them.
- Oh, that's so nice, thank you.
- Yes.
So then I bring it out to go,
"Oh, we have it always on show
as well."
THEY CHUCKLE
Oh, that's so cool.
Tom had laid down the challenge
for the day -
him against the three brothers.
All right,
so we've got a big battle today.
It's Coyne versus Murrays,
so it'll be my ball against the best
of their three balls.
This is golf at the edge of
the earth.
Nine holes of magic
at Cruit Island.
Nice, Bill.
- Good hit, man. Johnny!
- You're on the green,
Johnny, you're on the green!
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!
Get the fuck out!
Oh!
All right, Dan, that works.
- Lovely.
- Nice! It is a competition today.
And today, Tom Coyne is going down.
Oh, no!
"At Cruit, the holes
dropped off precipices
"with winding banks like something
out of a skateboard park,
"while all around you, the waves
of the North Atlantic
"burst on
the black claws of Donegal's coast.
"And whether you enjoy the rest of
the course or not, whether you spent
"the other parts of your afternoon
wondering why you had
"wandered so far from Doonbeg,
"I dare any sighted golfer to deny
that the sixth
"at Cruit Island was, yard for yard,
"one of the best holes
in the world."
Oh, look at this.
HE LAUGHS
Oh, boy!
The famous sixth. Just 150 yards.
But there's nothing between you
and the green except the Atlantic.
- Get in!
- "Get in," he says.
- Oh!
- Oh, it felt good,
he liked it.
- Golfer, that one.
- Yo!
- There you go.
- Nice shot, Tom.
- Thank you.
- Just like
-
- Oh!
Joel won the hole for his brothers,
bringing the sides all square.
- Oh, shit. Get down.
- Uh-oh!
- Oh, trouble.
Believe me,
Tom's insides are roiling.
This is the kind of drama they asked
for.
When I played him the other day
and he lost,
- he didn't speak to people for hours.
- Yeah.
- Hours.
He was walking around graveyards.
That got really close.
- Oh, good shot, Joel.
- Give me a break on that!
- He's very good.
- But this is going
to be another rough one,
cos this'll be a public humiliation.
All the people on this island
are going to know.
All 45 people are going to be there,
and they'll know
what happened to Tom Coyne today.
Oh. Lovely fella, yeah,
but he's just another
Philly loser today.
- Just another Philly loser.
- Bear down.
A bit of trash talk. I would say,
no, Bill keeps it
You won't hear it from him.
- Oh, he was? Oh, fuck!
-Yes!
Yeah, it's kind of a relief.
Yeah, it's nice. We're competing
against him
and not against each other.
With Tom and his brothers around,
our man didn't seem much like
the famous Bill Murray any more.
He was just Bill.
I hit it pretty good.
Come on, roll down the hill and get
in the cup.
And after all these years,
that suited him just fine.
So, you know, I've travelled with
the brothers a little bit,
and it's awesome to see
them get together.
I mean, they're a really close
family.
And it's cool to see the dynamic.
And they're also, like,
incredibly supportive
of each other, too.
They have a relationship that,
you, like, kind of envy, you know?
- That's good.
- Making good contact.
- Not so bad yourself.
- I mean,
in the time I'm spending with Bill,
it's pretty clear that the most
important thing to him is family.
You try to explain to people
that don't understand.
You say, "Well,
imagine that you're walking around
"in nature for four hours,
"and you're with your friends,
and just your friends.
"And the phone doesn't ring.
You don't have to work,
"you don't have to answer to
anything but yourself."
All of the dissatisfaction
just steamed away like
a boiling pot of tea.
You know, it just went away.
- Oh, yeah. Really good.
- Smooth whisky there.
- That's nice.
- Thanks, everybody.
Thank you, everyone.
Nice shot.
Oh, shit!
As they'd come to the eighth hole,
Joel needed to sink his putt
to win the match for the brothers.
- My man!
- Oh!
Well done.
- Well, I made it to the eighth.
- It's hard to beat all the Murrays.
I made it all the way
to number eight.
- I learned my lesson.
- It was like Hector and Achilles,
- it was fantastic.
- Nice.
- Good day.
- Good day.
Good day, good day, good day.
- All right.
- Yeah, that beats prison.
It had been a tough few days
for Bill.
- Come on, double or nothing?
- Double or nothing.
But an afternoon with the people
who know him best seemed to be just
the tonic he needed.
The golf might be forgotten
soon enough.
I would say
that photograph won't be.
HE CHUCKLES