Max Minghella wears a Longines Conquest Heritage

In the episode called "Dear Henry," Whitney Halberstram stands in a narrow corridor between Henry Muck and his wife Yasmin, the couple whose bank he is quietly bringing down. Max Minghella plays Whitney, the man who runs Tender, a British bank propped up by a fraud he controls and Henry will be left to answer for. Industry treats him as its fourth season's first real villain, and dresses him to be underestimated.

Costume designer Laura Smith uses watches on the show the way its characters use balance sheets, as evidence of where a person started and how far they mean to climb. She put forty or fifty of them on the cast this season and calls the work volume control, making the important piece register without announcing itself. GQ built a whole feature around Whitney's watches, its lead image credited to Longines. The one tied to him is the Conquest Heritage Central Power Reserve, a 38mm steel automatic with the date at twelve and a power-reserve indicator laid out on rotating discs in the middle of the dial, a 72-hour reserve when it is fully wound.

That complication does one thing, which is show how much running time is left before the movement winds down. Whitney spends the season drawing down that kind of reserve, in other people's money and in Henry's name. The Longines is not the only watch Smith fitted him with. The other is a Hublot, polished black chrome made to be seen, the watch of the man Whitney wants everyone to think he is.