A Course Called Ireland Trades Footsteps for Bill Murray

A journey on foot has a built-in editor: distance helps decide what happens next. Turn that journey into television, remove the walking and add Bill Murray, and the organising principle changes. That is the intriguing bargain behind A Course Called Ireland, the six-part Paramount+ series that began streaming on October 25, 2026. As described in Tony Dear’s October 29 review for LINKS Magazine, it takes Tom Coyne’s book as a departure point rather than a route map.^[1]

Coyne’s 2009 travelogue followed a 16-week walk around Ireland’s coastline, playing its 56 seaside courses. Those numbers matter beyond their usefulness as an adventure-book premise. Walking supplies continuity: the stretches between courses belong to the story as surely as the rounds themselves. The adaptation, filmed over roughly three weeks and running about three hours, abandons that physical undertaking. What it relinquishes is the relationship between effort, elapsed time and arrival that gives a walking narrative its shape.^[1]

In its place comes a travelling partnership with a long history. Coyne told LINKS that he had known Murray for more than 20 years; the actor had supplied a cover endorsement for the book, while his brother Brian Doyle-Murray appeared in the film of Coyne’s novel A Gentleman’s Game. Murray is therefore no arbitrary celebrity attachment. His presence gives the adaptation another centre of gravity: where the walker’s itinerary once provided momentum, an unpredictable companion can now supply it.^[1]

Creator Casey Scharf’s account of production makes that exchange explicit. Days had loose plans, and Murray’s changes of direction demanded flexibility. “We leaned into the unpredictability as part of the narrative,” Scharf told LINKS. Coyne likewise welcomed the spontaneity. This is a different kind of travel story: less concerned with completing a defined challenge than with following encounters. The potential gain is room for digression; the corresponding loss is the clear thread of one person making his way around an island.^[1]

The encounters Dear describes give that looseness a purpose beyond celebrity company. There is road bowling, hurling in Clarecastle, singing in a Fionnúig rambling house and a conversation with Chris O’Dowd about the revival of the Irish language at Neligan’s Pub in Dingle. Golf remains present through courses including Enniscrone, County Sligo and Cruit Island, but it shares the itinerary with other ways people spend time and sustain culture. Scharf’s stated intention was to keep Ireland central, rather than treat it as scenery for golf.^[1]

The most revealing example is Margaret, whom the production met outside a Kinsale sweet shop and subsequently asked to narrate the first episode, according to Scharf. A chance participant gets to help tell the story rather than simply appear in it. Dear also identifies Susan Daly, proprietor of Daly’s House in Doolin, where Coyne stayed during his original trek, among the people featured. Her presence offers continuity with the book even as the method of travelling changes. The adaptation’s strongest connection to its source may therefore be its people, rather than its route.^[1]