Matthew Macfadyen wears a Cartier Santos

Tom Wambsgans marries into the Roy family and spends the early seasons of Succession trying to pass as one of them. Matthew Macfadyen plays him as a striver from Minnesota who takes his cues from his wife, Shiv, right down to the brand on his wrist. Where she wears Cartier, so does he, and his Cartier is a Santos.

The Santos is one of the first wristwatches ever built for a man. Louis Cartier made it in 1904 for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont, an aviator who could not dig a pocket watch out of his coat while flying, so Cartier fixed a square watch to his wrist on a leather strap. The exposed screws on the bezel and the squared case have been Cartier's most masculine signature ever since.

There is something apt in Tom borrowing that particular watch. The Santos exists because a man needed the right instrument to belong somewhere new and high up, which is more or less the entire project of Tom Wambsgans. By the final season he has swapped it for an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, a harder and pricier watch for a man who has finally stopped asking permission to be in the room.