The Sifl and Olly Show is a comedy TV series that incorporates sock puppets, animation, and musical performances. Musicians Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco created and performed the series. The first episode aired on MTV in 1998. The show was cancelled in 1999. The characters, along with new material, currently appear on Liam Lynch's podcast entitled Lynchland.

History

The origins of The Sifl & Olly Show go back to the 1980s. As children, Crocco and Lynch would create and perform funny songs and sketches to entertain themselves. They remained friends through high school and college, even though they saw little of each other while they attended Kent State University. Lynch left Kent State and the duo was separated for a few years, but they reunited in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1990s and recorded the comedy album Camp Sunny Side Up on a 4-Track. During this period they were also constantly recording funny conversations, interviews, sketches, and songs. Soon after, Lynch moved to Liverpool, England to attend the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, but the friends continued to make funny recordings and send them to each other. In 1995, while Lynch was still in Liverpool, he found some broken 4-Track tapes and repaired them. These tapes contained conversations and material intended for his and Crocco's second comedy album (which they never recorded). He decided to make something using these tapes as a Christmas present for Crocco. Lynch had been inspired by a series of British commercials by Aardman Studios and had hoped to do stop-action clay animation, but he did not have the money or the equipment for it. Instead, he made puppets out of his own socks and a large plastic sunflower and recorded a video of himself acting out their tapes with the puppets. Lynch chose the name for the puppets from a fake commercial Crocco had made for one of their recordings, and Sifl & Olly were born. Lynch sent copies to MTV and MTV Europe, and although MTV America rejected them, MTV Europe liked them. In 1996, MTV Europe 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 it 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. Despite its cancellation, Sifl and Olly still appear along with some other characters in occasional episodes of Liam Lynch's podcast, Lynchland. Most of these appearances are clips from Season 3. On June 14, 2012, Liam Lynch posted a picture on his Twitter account of a set similar to that used on the show, fueling speculation about the show's return. This was followed by another picture posted on July 25 of a graphic for "Precious Roy's Fruit Chunkies." As of November 17, 2014, MTV has released two "best of" compilations on Amazon Video.

Description

Premise

The two main characters are a black sock puppet named Sifl and a white sock puppet named Olly. Sifl is the calmer leader of the show, while Olly is more excitable and often breaks into crazed furies. Their assistant, Chester, is a mumbling, often nonsensical character who still claims to be great at everything. The show was always very simple and low-budget. Most of the show's main characters were puppets, with background images or animations in the background via a chromakey. The two co-hosts often had a microphone in front of them. 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 often featured profanity, sexual references, drug innuendo, crude humor, bodily functions, and violence.

Regular segments

Often preceded by familiar intro screen and a short theme song, the segments included:

Characters

Fanbase

Fans of the show call themselves "sockheads". There is also an online group of Sifl and Olly video traders that are petitioning MTV to release the entire series on DVD. One group of fans even recorded a tribute CD recreating some of their favorite songs called Banging on Some Pots and Pans. The Sockheads mailing list group also organized a convention in Nashville called Cresvention. Cartoonist Aaron McGruder is a fan of the show. On one episode of his TV show The Boondocks, Huey exclaims to his grandfather's girlfriend that he is doing "prostitute laundry", which could be a direct reference to Sifl and Olly's song of the same name. A strip published on 4/28/00 also references the show, where character Michael Caesar is seen lamenting its cancellation. Award-winning writer J. Michael Straczynski was also a noted fan of the show, and at one time Lynch and Crocco were planning a sock puppet character voiced by Straczynski until the show was cancelled.

Sifl and Olly Video Game Reviews

In 2012, it was teased by Liam Lynch, via Twitter, that Sifl and Olly may return. On September 2, 2012, a promo appeared on the Machinima YouTube channel for a new show called Sifl & Olly Video Game Reviews. The first episode premiered on September 9, 2012. After the credits of the eighth video game review episode which aired on October 28, 2012, it was announced that Sifl & Olly were being moved to the Nerdist YouTube Channel. One "season," consisting of 5 episodes, was made available on that channel in 2013, ending April 18.

Video game

In July 2018, it was reported that American video game publisher Devolver Digital was in talks with The Sifl and Olly Show intellectual property owner Lynch to create a video game based on the show's license.