Sifl and Olly
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The Sifl and Olly Show is a puppet show that used sock puppets and animation. The show's first episode aired on MTV in 1997 and was cancelled in 1999. Marked by cheap production and bizarre humor, the series only aired two seasons, but became a cult favorite.
Sifl_and_Olly.jpg
Musicians Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco created and performed the series.
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History
The Sifl & Olly Show started when Crocco and Lynch were kids taping funny conversations with tape recorders. Throughout the years, they would play the tapes for family and friends. In the early 90s, while attending college in London, Lynch found some of their old tapes again. He videotaped himself acting out the tapes with sock puppets he named Sifl and Olly. He sent some of the tapes to Crocco as a Christmas present, but also sent copies to MTV and MTV Europe.
Although MTV America rejected them, MTV Europe liked them. In 1996, MTV-UK began airing Sifl & Olly clips between music videos as "idents." The popularity of the clips led to MTV America offering a half-hour format called The Sifl & Olly Show in July 1998. The show aired late at night, but later on they were moved to the evenings.
In the first season, clips of Sifl and Olly were mixed with music videos. Whenever the show was aired again, the music videos would be removed, leaving only the comedy clips. The show gained a cult following, but was cancelled after the second season. A third season was recorded and MTV promised to release the episodes on the Internet, but never did. The lost episodes were eventually released on DVD.
Premise
The two main characters were a green sock puppet named Sifl and a white sock puppet named Olly. Sifl was the more calm leader of the show while Olly was more excitable and often broke into crazed furies. Their assistant, Chester, was a mumbling, often nonsensical character who still claimed to be great at everything. No real living people or animals ever appeared on the show, only puppets.
The show was always very simple and low-budget. Most of the show had the main characters hunched over a microphone with weird images projected in the background. The show had an unscripted feel with the characters talking to each other in realistic, often meandering styles. Sifl and Olly would sing both original and classic songs throughout the show with an original song at the end. Though it featured puppets, the series was not intended for children. The humor, while always good natured, often featured profanity, sexual references, crude humor, bodily functions, and violence.
Regular segments included:
- Precious Roy's Home Shopping Network - a parody of the Home Shopping Network with bizarre products like Civil War Corpses and CAT Scan Glasses. The network was run by Precious Roy, who would yell unrelated lines, ending with "suckers!" The slogan of Precious Roy was "making lots of suckers out of girls and boys."
- Calls From the Public - Sifl and Olly would take calls supposedly from the public, but really just random and often bizarre characters who would call with problems or complaints.
- Rock Facts - At commercial breaks, the Rock Facts question would be asked and answered when they returned. The answers were always lies and usually involved the singer Björk.
- Interview Time - Guests interviewed included Death, an atom, and the G-spot. Sometimes they would announce a famous person that was going to be interviewed, but it would always turn out that the guest couldn't make it.
- Sifl & Olly News - Sifl and Olly would pretend to report on the (generally surreal) news.
Popularity
Fans of the show call themselves "sockheads." There is a lively group online trading videos and petitioning MTV to release the entire series on DVD. One group even recorded a tribute CD recreating some of their favorite songs called Banging on Some Pots and Pans. They also organized a convention in Nashville called Socks 2001.
Also, as the show's only "celebrity guest", skateboarder Tony Hawk made a guest appearance on the show in Season 3, providing his own voice to accompany a puppet made to resemble him.
External links
- Official Sifl & Olly Website (http://www.sifl-n-olly.com/) - featuring merchandise and video clips
- The New Sockheads.Net (http://www.users.qwest.net/~winc13/sifl-n-olly/media_frame.html) Features clips in streaming video
- Sifl & Olly Information Center (http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/siflnollyinfo/)
- Sifl & Olly Sock Zone (http://siflnolly.alluvium.com/) - features mp3s and videos
- Liam Lynch of Sifl 'n Olly (http://www.theshrubbery.com/1198/siflnolly.html) Interview with series' creator, Liam Lynch
- Socks 2001 (http://socks01.tripod.com/socks2001/) Official Site of the convention
- Episode Guide (http://www.geocities.com:80/TelevisionCity/Network/5899/index.html)
- Sifl & Olly Archive (http://www.najical.com/s-o/)