Samantha Bee hosts "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee"

Full-on funny: It's a crowded TV landscape out there, especially for late-night hosts. Late-night, over-caffeinated boob tube viewers looking for a few laughs before getting some shut eye have a Conan, a John, a Stephen, multiple Jimmys and so many other comedians to choose from.

Last year, yet another challenger arrived on this moonlit landscape, and it's taken her little time to carve out her own spot in the late-night TV crowd.

Season 2 of "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" launches this week, and it has moved from Monday nights to Wednesdays. The season premieres Wednesday, Jan. 11, on TBS.

If the former "The Daily Show" correspondent's series seems to share some DNA with John's Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" on HBO, there's a good reason -- Oliver also broke in his TV funny bone under the tutelage of Jon Stewart in "The Daily Show."

Unlike most of the late-night fare out there, "Full Frontal" is a weekly show, not daily, which lends itself better to longer segments that take a deeper look at whatever topical issues have caught Bee's eye. It's a format that's worked out well for Oliver, too. While the similarities between those two series are evident, "Full Frontal" is definitely its own unique beast.

The credit for that can be laid squarely at Bee's feet. After a dozen years as one of Stewart's correspondents, she has honed and refined her on-screen presence, and her comedic timing is unsurpassed.

The targets of her skewering might not be to everyone's taste -- her particular politics and beliefs are definitely on full display -- but the wit she wields to eviscerate some of the more ridiculous parts of our culture is so sharp, it's really no surprise that the show has won numerous awards, been nominated for many more, and even holds a 100 percent "fresh" rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

That's a lot of achievement for a little show that's only been around for a single season, and with another season starting up, there's no telling how far Bee will take it. "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" moves to a new night for its second season, which premieres Wednesday, Jan. 11, on TBS.

A forbidden feature: Tom Hardy is returning to television. The English actor is best known for his starring roles in blockbuster movies, including "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015) and "The Revenant" (2015) -- the latter earned him an Academy Award nomination for his performance. He's no stranger to television, though, and has excelled in roles in "Band of Brothers" and "Peaky Blinders."

A new eight-part miniseries premieres Tuesday, Jan. 10, on FX, with Hardy lending his considerable gravitas to the starring role. 

"Taboo," made in collaboration with BBC One in the U.K., is a period drama set in 1814, with Hardy starring as James Keziah Delaney, a wealthy adventurer who returns home to England from Africa despite having been presumed long dead. He's come back to his old life to take up the mantle of his father's legacy and to inherit the remains of his shipping empire. But Delaney soon learns that his inheritance is poison-laced.

The show was created by Hardy himself, along with his father, Chips, and screenwriter Steven Knight. Leo Bill ("The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," 2011), Oona Chaplin ("Game of Thrones"), Michael Kelly ("Now You See Me," 2013) and Jonathan Pryce ("Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," 2006) also star in the drama about betrayal, backstabbing, loyalty and the overwhelming temptation of wealth.

"Taboo," FX's new eight-part miniseries, premieres Tuesday, Jan. 10.

Caught a second time: Discovery is bringing the story of one of America's most infamous terrorists to the small screen. Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, terrorized the nation for nearly two decades with his homemade bombs, killing three people and injuring many others. Now, the story of how the criminal mastermind was caught is being made into an eight-episode miniseries called "Manifesto."

Still in its early production stages with no release date set, "Manifesto" is set to star Paul Bettany ("Legion," 2010) as the Unabomber, a mathematical genius with a violent opposition to modern technology and the industrialization of the country.

Starring opposite Bettany as the FBI agent who would ultimately prove to be Kaczynski's downfall is Sam Worthington ("Avatar," 2009). In his first major role on American television, Worthington stars as Jim Fitzgerald, a criminal profiler whose radical new ideas about profiling and intelligence gathering prove divisive within the agency -- that is, until they get results.

It's been more than two decades since the Unabomber was finally caught, but fascination with the man who evaded authorities for so long remains. Watch for "Manifesto" on Discovery sometime in the not-so-distant future.