I only caught a few episodes of this series, as it ran too early in the morning for me to watch it regularly. What I did see wasn't all that great. The animation was bad. Even by TV series standards it was bad. The voice acting was so-so, save for Itchy and Killer who both had the original voice actors from the first film, and the story lines were uninteresting. Like I said in my review of the sequel, this series just takes away from the sacrifice Charlie made in the first movie.
This is one series I wouldn't recommend unless you really loved the second All Dogs Go To Heaven.

ADGTH the Series is a bit of a guilty pleasure with me. I know it's really not all that good, but I just find it enjoyable in a soap-opera-ish sort of way, with only a few episodes being so bad I'd skip them.

I guess I just enjoy the universe the series sets up, and the characters. Charlie is a particularly likeable sort of anti-hero. He didn't survive 11 years and 3 voice actors for nothing.

The series is set in present day San Francisco, like the second movie, but with some significant changes to relationships.

*SPOILER ALERT FOR ADGTH 2 - Don't read the next paragraph if you haven't seen the second movie, and think you might want to. *

At the end of ADGTH 2 Charlie and Sasha are effectively 'married' and in the final scene are moving in together with David's family. In the series, it's like none of that happened. David is still around, but doesn't play a major role in most episodes. Charlie and Itchy now live in a bachelor pad, and Sasha now runs the Flea Bite Club (and presumably lives there). Charlie and Sasha's relationship seems to have changed into a sort of 'not quite together' thing. At times Charlie neglects her completely, regards her as a drag, and deliberately avoids her. At other times he becomes jealous if someone else sees her (insanely jealous in the episode where she flirts with Carface (which was his idea in the first place)). Sasha for her part often maintains an air of disdainful "I don't need you", but at other times goes to mush when she thinks Charlie is going to 'propose'. Basically they both want each other, but want to maintain their independance, and are too proud to admit their attraction. I've seen one ADGTH fansite whose owner considered this sacrilege, but I think it injects a tension into proceedings which would have been impossible if everyone was shacked up at David's parent's place.

*END ADGTH 2 SPOILER *

There are some other changes, too. Itchy is permanently back - you can tell that from the credits, so I'm not giving anything away there. Episodes vary in structure, but a typical one might go something like this: Anabelle comes up with an Angelic mission for them, much to Charlie's disgust. He usually has to be dragged kicking and screaming by Itchy. In fact Charlie's recklessness and disregard for his friends, and his coming good at the last minute is what provides a lot of the dynamic of the show.

Itchy meanwhile gets himself a girlfriend at some stage in proceedings, and has a relationship which is a lot more straightforward than Charlie and Sasha's. Killer is back from the original movie (which means the series actually has more of the cast from the first movie than the second movie did.) Exactly how Killer manages to be wandering around on Earth 60 years after the original movie is never explained. Come to think of it

*ANOTHER SPOILER*

Carface sort of... died and went to Hell at the end of the second movie, didn't he. Well, nobody seems to to stay in Heaven in this franchise, so I suppose it can apply to the Underworld, too.

* END SPOILER *

Well, the good and the bad. The bad is that the animation is pretty terrible, even for late 90's TV. Characters sometimes go quite off-model, especially when they're facing the camera (never a good idea to draw dogs or anything with a muzzle front-on anyway: they never look right). There's certainly nothing very challenging or cerebral about the stories either.

The good: well, as I said, I like the soap-opera feel of the setting. Also, for a TV cartoon they did a pretty good job in getting the entire cast of the second movie on-board, with the addition of Charles Nelson Reilly from the first movie, and with the only exception of Charlie Sheen - but Steven Webber sounds just like him as Charlie anyway. In other words, the voice actors are good.

There are occaisional musical numbers which are often quite decent. And to add a bit of spice, in season two Bebe Neuwirth doubles up as Belladonna, Anabelle's evil cousin, who is a sort of punk/goth purple Whippet. She kind of becomes Carface's boss, and tends to liven things up when she appears.

Finally there are a gang of bad-guy canines led by an extremely dumb dog with a German accent. There's no doubt that this group were directly teleported into the end of 'Balto 2'. You might even remember that in that film one of them even makes a crack about 'I thought all dogs went to Heaven' or some such.

Well, like I said, I'm probably giving it half a star more than it deserves, just out of personal preference. It's not completely without more sophisticated references (actually now that I think of it, Charlie makes a reference to 'Cat's Don't Dance' in one episode), but it would be stupid of me to recommend this to anyone who wasn't a really serious fan of the second movie, and even then, don't expect it to be as good.

I don't even know if the series is playing any more in the US, and the only video released was in England for some reason, so it won't play on NTSC VCR's unless they're dual-format. You might have to track down someone who's taped them off the TV, but then if you're that big a fan, you probably already have.