Tarzán is a television series that aired in syndication from 1991–1994. In this version of the show, Tarzan (Wolf Larson) was portrayed as a blond environmentalist, with Jane (Lydie Denier) turned into a French ecologist. The series aired in syndication in the United States.
This was the first Tarzan series to feature Jane Porter as a major character, the 1966 series having excluded her as part of the "new look", and Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle having featured her in only one episode.
Ron Ely, famous for playing Tarzan in the original series, played a villain named Gordon Shaw in the first-season episode “Tarzan the Hunted”.
Juma the Lion was performed by two trained male adult African lions. One of them was Sudan of Thousand Oaks, California's Animal Actors of Hollywood. He would subsequently perform as a stunt double for the Bowmanville Zoo's two lions, Caesar and Bongo, for Paramount's The Ghost and the Darkness. The other lion that acted in this series was Josef of Salinas, California's Monterey Zoo. Disney's animation studio used him as a live action model for Mufasa in Disney's animated production of The Lion King around the same era.[1]
The show inspired the poem “Sunday, Tarzan in His Hammock” by Lewis Buzbee, which he wrote as "...revenge against Tarzan and cheerful aerobics instructors everywhere.”[2]