If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself strolling through a picturesque European city these days, keep your eyes peeled for attractive humans chasing each other down winding streets and narrow alleyways, through cafés and taverns, up and down staircases. Sometimes in cars, sometimes on motorcycles, often on foot. It’s happening all the time!

Or at least it’s happening in the familiar genre of streaming thriller/crime dramas, e.g., “Lupin,” “The Diplomat,” the recent Prime Video release “Steal,” and now “Vanished,” a tightly spun, keep-‘em-guessing mystery that unspools in just four densely plotted episodes. Although the structure often trots out well-worn tropes, and a few hairpin storyline turns might have you rolling your eyes, this is a work of screen-popping South of France visuals, well-choreographed chase sequences, and a visceral, unvarnished lead performance by Kaley Cuoco.

“Vanished” is set in present-day, but it vibes a bit like a late 1960s/early 1970s thriller. Cuoco plays Alice Monroe, an American archaeologist who has been involved in a torrid romance for the last four years with Sam Claflin’s almost too-good-to-be-true Tom Parker; the man looks like he climbed off the cover of a romance novel, and he works for an international charitable organisation that provides vaccines and other vital supplies to refugees. (In a flashback sequence, Alice witnesses a scene when armed bandits swarm a camp in Jordan and start grabbing women and children — until Tom literally stands in front of a gunman and says they’ll have to go through him first. The threat is thwarted. From that moment, Alice is utterly gone on this guy.)

When Alice is offered a prestigious position as an assistant professor of archaeology at Princeton, she invites Tom to join her, even though that means they’ll both have to give up the globetrotting life. “I want to build a life that’s mine, not just uncovering other people’s,” says Alice. It’s somewhat surprising when Tom says he’d like nothing more than to live a quiet life with Alice in New Jersey – but first, they’ll take a romantic train trip from Paris to Arles in southeastern France. Tom has to take a call. He tells Alice he’ll be right back. Alice falls asleep. When she wakes up, she learns that Tom has never returned.

There’s no sign of Tom anywhere on the train. The conductor is rude and unhelpful, almost suspiciously so. A French woman named Hélène (a superb Karen Viard) volunteers to translate for Alice on the train, and even offers to continue assisting the understandably panicked and distressed Alice when they disembark in Marseille, but Alice goes alone to the police station. Enter the sardonic Inspector Drax (Simon Abkarian), who tells Alice that hundreds of people go missing in France every day, and she has to wait the obligatory 48 hours before even filing a report.

Each episode of “Vanished” ends with a good old-fashioned reveal/cliffhanger, as Alice takes it upon herself to investigate Tom’s disappearance. Things get a bit bogged down in the flashback sequences detailing the Alice-Tom romance, but if we look closely, the showrunners drop in clues among the sun-dappled courtship.

One of the refreshing things about the series is that this brilliant but unassuming archaeologist doesn’t suddenly develop action hero skills. When Alice runs, it looks like she doesn’t do a lot of running; when she jumps, she lands with a thud and comes up limping. When there are chase sequences, she’s in the passenger seat. Still, she makes some REALLY bad decisions that put her in harm’s way, and you kinda just go with it and chalk it up to people-in-peril poetic license. 

The casting and performances are outstanding. Viard shines as Hélène, a disgraced journalist who drinks far too much and is trying to resuscitate her career, and let’s just say she wasn’t on that train by happenstance. Matthias Schweighöfer is a live wire as Tom’s colleague, Alex Durand, who sympathizes with Alice. Dar Zuzovsky is like a Bond character as Mira, who works in the trenches alongside Tom and looks down at Alice as something of a tourist in Tom’s life. Even Inspector Drax fellow might not be what he appears to be.

Maybe they’re all in on it, whatever “it” is! Maybe none of ‘em are; maybe Tom just freaked out about a future as the handsome guy on Alice’s arm at faculty fundraising events. One thing’s for sure – “Vanished” ends with the right amount of closure and spice.