Remember when Ragnar Lothbrok from “Vikings” (Travis Fimmel) teamed up with Sara Tancredi from “Prison Break” (Sarah Wayne Callies) to solve crimes? Also, Blair Waldorf from “Gossip Girl” (Leighton Meester), warrior princess Xena herself (Lucy Lawless)and, just for fun, Walter Skinner from “The X-Files” (Mitch Pileggi) were also there? I’m not trying to bore you: These actors all starred in “Tarzan,” a very real 2003 small-screen reimagining of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stories about the titular ape-man, as conceived by “Supernatural” and “The Boys” TV show creator Eric Kripke.
Although it’s virtually impossible to watch (legally) these days, the internet has stopped Warner Bros. from watching. television division to completely lose memory of this series. As developed by Kripke for The WB back when he was a newcomer, “Tarzan” gives its namesake to Fimmel, aka John Clayton Jr. The long-absent heir to the current billionaire corporation known as Greystoke Industries, Tarzan has been living in the jungles of Africa for 20 years when he is found by his uncle and Greystoke CEO, Richard Clayton (Pileggi), and taken to New York. Naturally, upon his arrival, our animal hero proves ill-suited to managing the family business. He is, however, someone who would come in handy if you needed an associate who could sneak into the Big Apple, as Detective Jane Porter (Callies) soon realizes.
From a narrative standpoint, “Tarzan” essentially turns the Lord of the Jungle into Batman…however, if you’re a child of the 1990s, it may also seem like a live-action riff on Disney’s “Gargoyles” that replaces Keith David’s Goliath with another stoic hunk. Regardless, if you doubt whether this silly but rather charming setup could sustain a real series, then you probably won’t be shocked to learn that “Tarzan” was axed after just eight episodes.
Eric Kripke accepts that his show Tarzan will be forgotten
He may not be particularly proud of the show, but Eric Kripke seems pretty happy with what “Tarzan” has done for him professionally. In a 2008 interview with Creative Screenwriting (via Live Journal), he didn’t mince his words, calling the show “crap.” Nonetheless, Kripke insisted he would “stand behind the pilot” he wrote for The WB, itself the predecessor to The CW.
“I was hungry to have something in production, so I wrote a 50-page story that was finished. Then it got made, and I had something in production, and all my dreams came true,” Kripke explained. It wasn’t until the WB asked him to expand his “Tarzan” pilot into a series that it became “hell in every way,” as he described it. But once again, his suffering was not in vain. Because Kripke and his creative team dutifully tried the old academia (something he compared to “[standing] proudly on the deck of the Titanic with my violin and just [playing] far”), Warner Bros. heard it when it presented its next project.
The resulting series? “Supernatural”, a television juggernaut which, like “The X-Files,” was heavily inspired by the 1970s cult horror classic “Kolchak.” (Kripke even admitted that the series started out as “a mediocre show.” [‘Kolchak’] scam.”) Between that and the way “Tarzan” boosted the careers of its new stars and crew (including Leighton Meester, who played Jane’s sister Nicki), while providing work for established people like Lucy Lawless (who played Tarzan’s aunt Kathleen Clayton), the series ultimately benefited most parties involved.
More importantly, it gave us this promo full of flashcuts and close-ups of Travis Fimmel’s sexually sullen (often shirtless) Tarzan – a really nice time capsule of early 2000s network television.
