After a Jewish high-voiced woman from Flushing New York gets fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) is mistaken as applying for a nanny for widowed Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) who has three children Maggie (Nicholle Tom) Brighton (Benjamin Salisbury) and Grace (Madeline Zima) when she is stuck selling cosmetics in Manhattan. As she spends years there she becomes great friends with the butler Niles (Daniel Davis) and the three kids. She is good friends with the widowed man and some romance sparks through the years.