In the last decade, American zoos have spent more than $1 billion to create jungles, rain forests and mountain highlands that closely resemble the natural habitats of their captive animals. Junking the bars and padlocks in favor of these elaborate constructions certainly provides a more humane environment for the animals, but an equally important motivation lies in luring humans to this cage-less menagerie. Once they are sufficiently awed and delighted by the gorillas and sun bears in their authentic digs, current zoo theory goes, the humans will then lend their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks to the real work of today's zoo-a crusade to save thousands of species from extinction.

In "Peaceable Kingdom," [Lindsay Wagner], once "The Bionic Woman" and currently Ford's best pitchwoman, returns to series television as Rebecca Cafferty, a widowed mother of three and the director of a big-city zoo, who lives with her family and their pet sea lion on the zoo grounds. "The Dukes of Hazzard's " Tom Wopat plays her brother, the zoo's lion-hearted curator.

[Mark Waxman] insisted that the series will never do anything that is "truly against zoo doctrine" and that the staff of the show is committed to helping portray zoos, animals and the necessity of working to preserve the environment in as positive a light as possible. [Warren Thomas] confirmed that the series is improving every week in terms of its portrayal of the zoo and zoo issues.

STEVE WEINSTEIN