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Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is an animated television series based on the film of the same name. The series was produced by Morgan Creek Productions and Nelvana for Warner Bros. Television. It aired for two seasons from 1995 to 1997 on CBS. A third season and reruns of past episodes aired on Nickelodeon from 1999 to 2000.
The series is a sequel of the Ace Ventura movies. The titular character, voiced by Canadian actor Michael Daingerfield (credited as Michael Hall), is a goofy private investigator with a predilection for animals of all species.
The show ran on CBS for two seasons, with a third season airing on Nickelodeon when that channel acquired the show to broadcast reruns. Many of the characters from the film were retained, though not voiced by their original actors. While the original films already had a strongly cartoonish comedic aesthetic, they were eclipsed by the slapstick and garish humor of the cartoon. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane was among the writers over the course of the show's run.
The show was rife with toilet humor and anachronisms (one episode centered around the Egyptian Mau, claiming it to be an extinct breed of cat, when, in fact, they are not), displaying similar humor to his later series. Despite running in a time slot after The Mask (another popular Jim Carrey-based cartoon) and a crossover with that show (in that series' finale, "The Aceman Cometh"), the series failed to gain a large audience. Ultimately, both The Mask and Ace Ventura were canceled. A new and completely different season of the series ran on Nickelodeon.
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A three-episode DVD of the show was bundled with the two Ace Ventura films. This was also the only DVD release of this show. It's currently unknown if the entire series will be released.
Every episode of this show can be found online (all recorded off VHS/TV), with the exception of just one episode.
Season 2's 10th episode "Robo West" cannot be found anywhere.
Season 1's 11th episode "The Big Stink" was also lost until April 16th, 2016. It was found by Reddit user Newclearfallouton the file-sharing site MySpleen. A YouTube Channel by the name of "The Lost Cartoons Archive" has uploaded it to YouTube and it can be watched HERE (removed due to copyright.
On May 24th, 2018, a man called Dan Vzare emailed The Lost Cartoons Archive with two additional episodes from season 3 that he'd found on his hard drive. "Circus Ace" and "The Cat Who Paints" are the names of the episodes. Much like "Robo West", there were zero traces of these episodes online. Not even on Wikipedia's list of episodes for the show until Dan added them himself. He found the episodes years ago from a now-defunct torrent site. The two episodes can also be watched on The Lost Cartoons Archive's YouTube channel HERE and HERE (removed due to copyright).
It turns out that a copy of "Robo West" has apparently been available online for an unknown amount of time, as discovered by a user called "Book333" who reports finding the episode on the 16th page of random Google search (posted on this very page on April 9th, 2019). On May 7th, 2019, a Snahp.it user by the name of "StarkSkywalker" shared some German downloads of the entire series from Amazon, including "Robo West", which appears to be the same copy that Book333 found. Unfortunately the audio is in German, so there is still zero trace of this episode online in English. StarkSkywalker soon contacted an associate of The Lost Cartoons Archive and it has been uploaded HERE (removed due to copyright).
In October 2021, the entire series was made available on the US streaming service Tubi, including "The Big Stink" and "Robo West" in English. Thus making the show officially no longer completely lost, 26 years after those two particular episodes aired! Users within the US can stream the series for free. Those outside the US can use a VPN to access it.