Michael Fassbender stars in Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen's drama about a sex-addicted New Yorker.
Brandon (Fassbender) is a good-looking, well-dressed and successful Manhattan tech exec. He lives alone in a stylish, if austere, apartment and relentlessly pursues what has become his defining obsession: orgasm.
From early morning masturbation, through online-fuelled office onanism, to the women he coldly picks up or the prostitutes he pays, he's driven by his unremitting, but entirely joyless, need for sexual release. How he arrived at this sorry state is unexplained, but he does his best to keep this side of his life separate from his friends and colleagues. Apart, that is from his married boss David, who's well aware of the porn-clogged hard drive on Brandon's desk; a fact he seems to use as leverage to 'encourage' Brandon to accompany him on his own extra-marital dalliances in singles bars.
And then, unexpectedly and wholly unwantedly, Brandon's sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) pitches up, needing a place to stay; her passion and need for human contact are his polar opposite, and the siblings' enforced proximity duly delivers a variety of tensions...
Shame is a Film programme that first aired in 2011 and has been classified a 18 certificate.
