The Lord of the Jungle is leaving town, and he's taking the Warrior Princess with him.

Production has closed down — likely, if not yet officially for good — on the WB network's updated, urbanized, Toronto-shot Tarzan series, consigned last week to that euphemistic netherworld, "hiatus," only eight episodes into its inaugural season.

Post-pilot creative tinkering, including a name change (from Tarzan And Jane) and the after-the-fact addition of Lucy Lawless, the former Xena: Warrior Princess, to the cast, did nothing to stem the show's steadily declining ratings.

Though not yet actually, irrevocably cancelled, Tarzan is not expected to return.

And thus neither, reluctantly, is Lucy Lawless, who joined the series two episodes in, to play the relocated vine-swinger's ally and aunt.

The New Zealand-born actress had been shuttling back and forth, pretty much weekly, between the production here and her home in L.A., where she now lives with her husband, Xena producer Bob Tapert, their two young sons and her teenage daughter from an earlier marriage.

Though the commute was starting to take its toll, Lawless says she'll miss Toronto.

"I had such a good time there," the actress enthuses. "Great city. Wonderful culture. In some ways it reminds me a lot of New Zealand.

"The people are sensible. In stark contrast to L.A., there's a good amount of common sense there. Also a sly sense of humour that I quite enjoyed.

"I was feeling the love, let's put it that way. I really loved the crew and the cast, and everybody I met there. I made some good friends. I was sorry to leave. But I'm sure I'll be back."

She is back, in a sense, as soon as this Sunday at 8 p.m., and in a somewhat more familiar context: The former Warrior Princess is the host of a five-part Discovery Channel documentary series, Warrior Women.

The shows celebrate the real-life women of history who kicked butt in battle, Xena-style ... though none of them ever got her own TV show (one of them, however, Boudica of Britain, was the subject of a recent PBS TV-movie).

"These women have been written out of history, largely," Lawless said.

"These are interesting characters in human history, and it's about time we all learned something more about them. They're fascinating."

The series kicks off with the, at least, somewhat celebrated Joan of Arc, followed at 9 by the true story of China's Wang Cong'er, the real Mulan. Next Monday at 8 it's Britain's battling Boudica, Tuesday the Irish pirate queen, Grace O'Malley, Wednesday the Apache warrior, Lozan.

And who better to present these unsung heroines than the woman who became an international icon as their fictional sword-swinging sister, Xena?

"I have come to know swordplay intimately," Lawless laughs. "It's not something I boast about."

But it does uniquely allow her, as she does in next Tuesday's Grace O'Malley segment, to engage in mock combat with a burly Irish weapons expert and more than hold her own.

"That?" she demurs. "That was just a display of how rusty I've become. I've got cobwebs on my sword arm."

She found the subject of that same segment particularly compelling. "Grace was my favourite. Hers was, I believe, in a way, the most successful life. For one thing, she didn't die young. She died at the grand old age of 73, which was really quite something in those days. Militants like her and her family were being killed left, right and centre when they came up against the might of the British forces.

"She was just an incredible woman. She was sexually liberated, married and divorced, she took a young lover ... The Demi and Ashton thing? Nothing new there. They didn't invent the `toy boy.'

"She was just a fascinating, capable, brilliant woman."

Her own, fictional fighting days well behind her, her hair now short and a natural strawberry blonde in place of Xena's flowing, darkly dyed 'do, Lucy Lawless is looking for another kind of challenge ... now that her services are apparently no longer required portraying the re-vamped ape-man's auntie.

"I've got this development deal," she said.

"I was just taking some meetings yesterday over at The WB. There's some pretty cool projects coming up. And in the meantime I'm very happy to be looking at little bits of film work."

But she figures that TV will remain her primary focus.

"There are pros and cons, and one of the cons is that you know where you're going to be the rest of your life. If it's successful. And of course you want it to be. I like the uncertainty of film, and the different roles ... if I'm doing television, I want to do something that gives me lots of scope.

"That's what I'm afraid of. Being bored. And doing something safe. Nothing scares me more than doing something safe."

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