Patricia Routledge (Keeping Up Appearances) is a Lancashire housewife keen on solving crimes. She starts a detective agency, pairs with a destitute teen (Dominic Monaghan), and totes a fully-loaded handbag. Hetty starts her sleuthing career in Missing Persons , the series pilot, which never aired in the U.S.

Hetty decides to try tracking down the long-lost son of her best friend's husband. A taste of success encourages her to go looking for missing persons as a professional sleuth. Only her aching feet slow her down as she searches for teenage runaways in the bustleing streets, dark alleys, and strip clubs of London. While Hetty's husband, Robert, wants her back home and in the kitchen, Hetty never leaves a job half finished, no matter how hard it turns out to be.