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Tarzan - Pilot
episode 1.1
USA 2003
produced by Pamela Oas Williams, Peter R. McIntosh, Laura Ziskin (executive), David Gerber (executive), David Nutter (executive), P.K. Simonds (executive) for Laura Ziskin Productions, David Gerber Productions, Warner Brothers/WB Network
directed by David Nutter
starring Travis Fimmel, Sarah Wayne Callies, Miguel A. Núnez jr, Leighton Meester, Mitch Pileggi, Johnny Messner, Garry Chalk, Kevin Durand, Fulvio Cecere, Douglas O'Keeffe, Launey Walter (as Launey Trask), Dan Zukovic
story by Eric Kripke, Michael Colleary, Mike Werb, screenplay by Eric Kripke, based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, music by Jason Derlatka, Jon Erlich
TV-series Tarzan, Tarzan (Travis Fimmel)
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Present day NYC: While investigating a murder scene, cop Jane Porter
(Sarah Wayne Callies) finds a savage man (Travis Fimmel) sharing his food
with some stray dogs in an almost animal-like manner. When she wants to
apprehend him as a suspect or witness at least, he makes a daring escape
though, and his acrobatic skills are truly remarkable. Pursuing him, Jane
almost falls to her death off a roof, but now the savage catches her and
just in time to pull her up ... and then he's picked up by a helicopter of
the Greystoke Foundation, and the men who take him away don't look too
friendly. Jane traces the savage man's trail down to the foundation and
finds out he's the nephew of the foundation's founder Richard Clayton
(Mitch Pileggi), who was raised among the animals in the Congo after his
parents were killed in a planecrash. His name in the jungle was Tarzan of
course ... eventually though, uncle Richard found him and took him back to
New York to keep him in a cage - nobody's sure why because ... well,
that's not a very nice thing to do (a bit on the illegal side too, if you
ask me), but it's backed by the police apparently. Anyways, after having
seen Jane at the Greystoke Foundation, Tarzan is quick to escape again to
totally wreck a date with her boyfriend Michael (Johnny Messner), upon
which he's promptly arrested. But to coin a clichéed phrase, these bars
can't hold him ... In the meantime, Jane and her partner (Miguel A.
Nuúnez jr) have tracked down a serial killer (Kevin Durand), who really
gets a kick out of burning the homeless to a cinder (his actual motives
are never revealed) ... and they manage to walk directly into one of his
obvious traps and are almost killed - but of course, Tarzan has picked up
Jane's scent and saves her just in time ... And in the post-finale,
while she promises to take him back to Congo where he belongs, Tarzan
insists on remaining in NYC to look after Jane. Tarzan-purists
of course will hate the concept of relocating Tarzan to NYC from square
one, even though it has been done before repeatedly, most prominently in Tarzan's
New York Adventure from 60 years earlier - and if you ask my
opinion, and if you ask me, to reinterpret the Tarzan-myth
as a crime drama has its charm ... but at the same time, it's also a
one-trick pony, once Jane is established as a tough-as-nails cop and
Tarzan as an urban acrobat helping her to solve crimes, then that's pretty
much that, there's nowhere the show can go after this. And this story was
already told in the pilot, and not too imaginatively so I might add, and
while a short series followed, it never managed to drum up real fan
interest and was dropped after only a handful of episodes.
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