Review: Samantha Bee's 'Full Frontal' is pointedly hilarious

One show. One woman. One smart, sharp and very funny voice.

Some might want to think that in this day and age, the gender of a comedy-show host doesn’t matter — but when most every other host of every similar show is male, having a woman running and fronting Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS, Mondays, 10:30 ET/PT) matters. A voice that wasn’t being heard, a perspective that wasn’t being seen, now gets a chance to break through.

And boy, did it.

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But if you don’t care about any of that, then care about this: Bee is as pointedly amusing as they come, as anyone who watched her as a correspondent on The Daily Show knows, and as anyone who watched the extremely promising debut of her new show now knows. And unlike the sweeter, sillier, less edgy comedy often practiced by Daily's new host Trevor Noah, Bee came out in full attack mode — intense, a little profane, and frequently hilarious.

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Of course, what better time to launch a show than right after the latest presidential debates in New Hampshire? After making fast work of Bernie Sanders as Fred Flintstone and Hilary Clinton as Harry Potter's Hermione, Bee moved on to the Republicans, who, she said, "laid out a banquet of all-you-can-eat crazy.”

Others have already taken aim at the debates, and some of Bee's jokes were variations on familiar themes, although good ones. There were slams at Donald Trump, jokes about Ben Carson's failure to appear on stage in a timely manner, and an extended field segment following Jeb Bush campaigning in New Hampshire that was almost poignant.

Some of Full Frontal's best moments, however, came when Bee hit targets you suspect some other hosts might have overlooked. She named a Kansas state senator the “Elected Paperweight of the Month” for proposing a dress code for women who testify in front of legislators, and vivisected Marco Rubio for a debate comment that twisted Hillary Clinton's views on abortion.

So yes, it was just one show. But it was an awfully good one.