The boys club of late night infotainment is shattered tonight with the inaugural episode of “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” (TBS, 10:30 p.m.).
The longtime “Daily Show” correspondent is hosting a show that looks to be more along the lines of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” in that it is staffed with journalists and researchers as well as comedy writers.
And news will likely be broken on the show, which is being showcased tonight on other Turner channels at 10:30 as well — TNT, truTV, HLN and Cartoon Network. The clip she showed reporters at the TV Critics Association winter press tour last month had to do with previously unreported Veterans Administration issues.
As she explained it, “Recently, it was announced that women were going to be filling all combat roles in the military, and we did an investigation about whether or not the VA would be prepared to receive that huge influx of female soldiers. Not surprisingly, the answer is no.
“We did discover that women who require the services of the VA, the services vary inconsistently. There are hardly any OB/GYNs. At any many of the VA hospital locations, there are no in the computer system, you can’t there are no words for women’s body parts such as vaginas and cervixes,” Bee said. “Not unlike in the world of late night television.”
Bee said “it’s natural” that her field reports on “Full Frontal” will resemble the reports she did on “The Daily Show.” Also, her new show will have “a pretty heavy field element because that was work that I loved doing so much. I’m really passionate about it, and I thought it would be a really interesting and unique thing to keep going. And we definitely are expanding that world, and we are definitely going to mix up the styles of things, and we are definitely going to evolve the medium,” she said. “That’s the plan.”
The fact that “there just has not been a wealth of women in late night,” she said, “of course, are going to come up. Women’s issues are extremely important to me. It’s not going to be the only thing that we talk about on the show, but we definitely it’s a passion that we will end up delving into.”
Of her other early investigations, “we have a story about the rise of Islamophobia during election cycles in particular that’s very interesting,” she said, “and I went to Jordan, and we are going to do a cultural orientation for Americans in order to better receive the Syrian refugees who are coming to this country, as they have to do an American cultural orientation in Jordan in order to be resettled.”
It’s not that “Full Frontal” will be a news show, Bee said, “we want to do is take stories that we don’t think receive enough attention and stab them with the hot poker of comedy.”
The stabbing begins tonight.