Fisher Stevens wears a Panerai Radiomir

In one Succession scene, Fisher Stevens's Hugo Baker stands in a pinstripe suit holding his phone in both hands, and a heavy cushion-cased watch shows at his wrist below the cuff. Hugo is a senior communications executive at Waystar Royco, half of the public-relations pair the Roy family leans on when a story needs managing, and he gets through the series by staying useful to whoever is on top and out of range when the power shifts. The watch is a Panerai Radiomir, chosen for him by Hodinkee's Danny Milton with the show's prop master, Monica Jacobs.

It is the oldest design Panerai makes, a cushion case slung from thin wire lugs, and the company comes by the look honestly. The Florentine firm built instruments for the Italian Royal Navy, and Radiomir was its name for a radium luminous paste it patented in 1916 for gunsights and dials. In 1936 it made the first Radiomir wristwatch, a 47mm prototype for the Navy's commando frogmen, the divers who rode manned torpedoes into enemy harbors and clamped mines to the hulls of warships. The wide case and glowing sandwich dial were built to be read in black water.

So Hugo, whose battles play out in meetings and on the phone in his hands, wears a watch descended from gear issued to men who fought underwater. Panerai stayed a naval supplier until 1993, when it opened to the public, and Richemont bought the brand four years later. Milton gave the other half of Waystar's communications team, Carolina, a 1970s Vacheron Constantin with a Roman numeral dial, a deliberate match for the two people the Roys keep around to clean up after them.