Fran Fine was the main character in the 1990s CBS sitcom The Nanny, largely based on and played by actress Fran Drescher
According to the show's theme song, Fran Fine was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens, until she was kicked out by her boyfriend, Danny Imperiali. She began selling makeup door-to-door to make ends meet, but then Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy), a Broadway producer hired her as the nanny for his three kids, Maggie (Nicholle Tom), Brighton (Benjamin Salisbury), and Gracie (Madeline Zima). Niles, Mr. Sheffield's butler, and C.C. Babcock, Maxwell's business partner, were also supporting characters on the show. As the show went on, Fran's mother Sylvia Fine and her best friend Val Toriello (Rachel Chagall) became regular guests.
Miss Fine was vain and self-conscious about her age; although never revealed, it was assumed that Fran was somewhere in her thirties although she often claimed to be 29 on the show (an accurate calculation would show that because she was 29 turning 30 in the first season, by the end of the sixth and final season, she was 35 going on 36). Fran was always under a lot of pressure to get married, by both her mother and herself.
Fran's favorite store is Loehmann's.
The romantic tension between Maxwell and Fran lasted until the show's last season, when the pair married. Until that point, they always addressed each other with proper employer-employee politeness, as "Miss Fine" and "Mr. Sheffield" (both titles were often self-lampooned, whether it was a sarcastic comment about how attractive Mr. Sheffield sounded when he shouted or how Ms. Fine pronounced her boss's name, "Mis-tuh Shef-field"). There were several important romantic episodes in their "platonic" relationship, including an occasion where Mr. Sheffield told Miss Fine that he loved her because he thought their plane back to New York was going to crash and then took it back (this event was later referred to as "the Thing" and was constantly held over Mr. Sheffield's head by Ms. Fine or Niles).
By the fifth season, Mr. Sheffield and Ms. Fine had begun a tentative romantic relationship, which consisted of several stolen kisses and a very large milestone: calling each other by their first names. After Mr. Sheffield confessed his love for her a second time (and didn't take it back), he immediately proposed marriage (a move that inadvertently sent C.C. Babcock, who had an obsessive crush on Maxwell and jealous hatred of Fran, to an insane asylum for a short period of time) and they were married in the season 5 finale. Having consummated their relationship on a deserted island during their honeymoon, Fran and Max went through the regular-albeit somewhat unusual-hardships of marriage, such as when Fran was too loud in bed (which lead to Max wondering if he is passionate enough for her, an idea he also debated the night before they were married), when Fran had to meet the parents of Maxwell's late wife, or when Max still referred to Fran as his nanny, during which he feels her full wrath ("A night on the couch sure whipped you into shape!").
Fran and Max also had some difficulties conceiving a child. Their problems stemmed from Fran being too stressed and issues with trying not to have sex when Fran wasn't ovulating (it turned out the couple's appetite for each other was insatiable). They finally welcomed twins, Jonah and Eve (who apparently has her mother's voice), into the Sheffield family during the series finale.
Despite the fact they stopped using each other's last names to address each other when they married, Fran and Max would still switch to their boss/employee roles out of habit. When Max was angry with her, he would shout "Miss Fine!" just as he would in the beginning of the series, usually with a worried Fran replying, "Oh no, I'm Miss Fine again!". The same was true for Fran, who would often call Maxwell "Mr. Sheffield" in bed.
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