Through the increasingly awful news cycle of 2016, with the feebleness of some nightly late night TV series, John Oliver and Samantha Bee emerged as the two late night hosts who could be as unequivocally envenomed as they wanted, with none of the usual network TV norms weighing on them. Because theirs are also weekly shows, they have the opportunity to go further in depth in their commentary than what you see on networks. So it’s not at all surprising that Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal has just been renewed for a second season at TBS. It’ll start on January 11, 2017, around the time that the world gets even shittier. (Trump’s inauguration is the 20th.)
Of course, one of the recurring criticisms about the ways this election came to be what it was had to do with people seeming stuck only within their biased commentator-bubbles and not seeking out original, tonally neutral, fact-based reportage — but that isn’t the fault of the likes of Bee and Oliver so much as it is a display that “a healthy media diet has to be broader than [just] that,” as Oliver himself recently put it. Voices like Bee’s can be enjoyed for their unmitigated anger, and it’s reassuring that hers will continue to give a comical but non-digressive voice to the awfulness of these times, particularly if that’s not substituting for actual journalism.
On top of Full Frontal With Samantha Bee’s renewal, the series will also be moving its time slot, and will now air on Wednesdays instead of Mondays, at 10:30 p.m. Thom Hinkle, the senior vice president of original programming at TBS, said in a statement:
Of course we’re picking up the show. In less than a year, Sam has become one of the most talked-about personalities in all of television and Full Frontal‘s audience continues to grow. We’re so lucky to have Sam and her Emmy-nominated team, led by the brilliant Jo Miller, as part of the TBS family.