When Ida Willis gets a new job as Housekeeper to Dr Robert Price and his wife Angie, she moves into their London flat. However, she soon discovers that Robert is the son she gave up for adoption when he was a baby, and she proceeds to call him Shane, the name she gave him when he was born.

Other characters include Ida's troublesome brother Wilfred (Harold Goodwin), and Robert's adoptive mother, Mrs Price Clare Richards, an upmarket widow with whom Ida doesn't actually get on. In the fourth series, they move up north to the Yorkshire village of Little Birchmarch, where Ida befriends Robert's mousy receptionist, Miss Parfitt.