It doesn't get much more British than a Toby-Jug.

Invented by potters in the pottery capital of Staffordshire, the exquisitely ugly caricature-shaped ceramic jugs have been collected in Britain since the 18th century.

Of course, they have always been the exception to the rule in the realm of "white gold", because what otherwise left the bulbous brick bottle ovens in Stoke-on-Trent was, for two centuries, classic English tableware with floral patterns or monochrome scenes.

In view of the cheap, simply designed imports at the beginning of the 20th century, the question of whether one should try something new in the premium segment, which became louder, was often answered as one of the porcelain managers did in "The Color Room". Plate shooting does:

"People don't want anything new.

They want what they always had.” Here he erred elephantine.

Specifically, the old white-gold men reckoned without the resolute Art Nouveau-inspired artisan Clarice Cliff, who revolutionized the English porcelain industry in the 1920s with her fresh colours, angular shapes and geometric patterns.

Many of their brightly colored pieces, which adorn the Victoria & Albert Museum today, were also more affordable than the staid upper-class service.

The very first series that bore her name, "Bizarre", a veritable explosion of color with slightly crooked, lively brushstrokes, was an enormous success, for which an entire industry had to be turned upside down and women had to be won over as buyers.

She did all of this by first getting Colley Shorter, one of the pottery's two owners, AJ Wilkinson (and Clarice's future husband),

convinced of their ideas.

Unlike his more cautious brother and co-owner Guy, the Victorian Colley recognized the need to embrace modernity with open arms.

Working class artist

It is surprising that this material has not been filmed before, since the rise of the talented working-class artist to the leading designer contains everything that makes a "period drama" appealing: nostalgia, romance, creativity and emancipation.

Sky is now closing this gap with the exhilarating and comfortable film adaptation by Australian director Claire McCarthy based on a book by Claire Peate.

The cast alone is worth tuning in to.

Colley Shorter is played by Matthew Goode, Downton Abbey's Henry Talbot, who manages to make the entrepreneur seem both fragile and assertive at the same time.

The film's star, of course, is Phoebe Dynevor, better known to many viewers as Daphne Bridgerton from the pompous Regency-era Netflix debutante prom.

Here Dynevor combines Daphne's endearing naivety with an adorable stubbornness.

Her artistic ideas seem credibly more important to Clarice than the affair with Colley, which is only hinted at.

Wisely, the film focuses on the early years of Cliff's tenure at Wilkinson—she gave up a higher-paying job with a competitor—through her rise to fame as a "modeler" (no chauvinism stopped her) and the creation of " Bizarre”, which meant saving the starving manufactory.

McCarthy has partly borrowed original porcelain and otherwise paid attention to an authentic, almost museum-like visual design.

Factory rooms, hairstyles, costumes, everything seems well researched, but also all too harmless and strangely removed from one's own time.

There is only one reference to political conditions that is really meaningful: Hitler's visage suddenly stares at us from a fish-and-chips package, the right-wing "Daily Mail" - and is quickly greased and disposed of.

As if nothing should disturb the obediently poetic "Feel good flow".

Even the acrid smoke from the countless pottery chimneys was aestheticized into an impressionistic painting.

What a chance there would have been to be as aesthetically bold as the heroine and dare to make a disruptive film full of colourfulness, angular characters and subversive topicality.

The chance was missed, probably in the belief that people want what they always wanted: Cinderella stories with a lot of warm-toned sentimentality.

So the already moderately exciting plot was thickened with sentimentalities such as a lower-class mother (Kerry Fox, not very convincing in her sighs) who just sighed because of the household chores and a pretty but of course terminally ill sister (Darci Shaw, pretty, but above all terminally ill) .

Despite such a predictable, escapist plot, "The Color Room" is the most beautiful fairy tale television, thanks to Phoebe Dynevor's infectiously energetic performance.

The Color Room

airs on Sky Cinema on Monday at 8.15pm.

Anytime on call.