Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.

People bring their stories of missed lust connections to an objective panel of experts who then judge whether they could have gone all the way or not.