Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

What followed was one of the most confident premieres in this suddenly never-ending phase of late-night debuts.... Full Frontal already feels like an essential voice in this political year.

It’s true that we’ve seen this technique [documentary parody] used on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, and the incisive political commentary has long had a home on The Daily Show, among others. But the Full Frontal approach still feels fresh, perhaps because we’re finally seeing a female host lead the charge, with a female showrunner (Jo Miller) and a diverse team of writers.

Every one-liner felt honed and briskly funny (describing Donald Trump as a “human caps lock”), and throughout, Bee exuded the quiet confidence that makes her a natural for this gig. Yes, it’s great to have a woman in the late-night fray; it’s also great to have someone who knows what she’s doing. If Full Frontal continues with the format it debuted this week, it’ll quickly become appointment TV for the political-comedy crowd.

The 2016 presidential campaign has yet to produce a distinctive comedy voice, but Ms. Bee made a bold early case that it could be hers.

Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal debuted last night with an acerbic, bracing premiere that felt like, in the best way possible, a much-needed slap in the face.

Bee's program is one more "publication" added to an increasingly crowded TV newsstand, but it already feels distinctive enough to merit regular check-ins, if not yet a DVR season pass.

Bee had a very strong first show, chowing down on the low-hanging fruit that is both sides of this current presidential election.

They say that it’s bad form to judge a new late-night series based on the first show. That at least a month of shows need to air before you get a proper sense of who the host is and what the show will be. That’s certainly true, and yet there’s a sense watching the premiere of Full Frontal that it has arrived fully realized.

If the targets and tone of her comedy were clearly flavored by her “Daily Show” roots, Bee’s voice is completely her own.... The only bad thing about the premier of Full Frontal was its brevity.

If Full Frontal were going to be on every night, I would say, unreservedly, that it had a fantastic beginning. It seamlessly did in its first episode what The Daily Show With Trevor Noah has had a hard time doing for more than four months: altering Jon Stewart’s M.O. to reflect the interests and passions of a new host, while maintaining enough of Stewart’s intelligence, fire, and aggravation to keep the show urgent and scathing.

Admittedly, nobody was really crying out for another show just like this, but funny is funny, and there’s a whole lot of time for Bee to work this terrain between now and November.

If Bee can sustain the tone she presented in this premiere episode, Full Frontal is going to be an exhilarating pleasure.

She was one of the best and brightest correspondents on “The Daily Show,” and she puts that same sharp, clever, unflinching sensibility front and center on Full Frontal. It helps that she is backed by dexterous writers who slip in a lot of wily asides.

The [late night] terrain is still forming, but there's a clear place for Full Frontal after this assured, effective debut.