When you think of food shows, you're stuck between formulaic cooking contests, bacon-huffing Canadian bozos on YouTube, and the flecks of tartar sauce trapped in Guy Fieri's beard. There's not all that much else. But tonight a new food show debuts on PBS, and it promises (though this is not to say that we promise) to expend a fresh shot of eats-oriented television into the atmosphere with each episode.

Created by a team of award-winning documentary filmmakers, Food Forward pledges to hit a number of perpetually hot topics — school lunch reform, sustainable fisheries, urban agriculture, and so forth — discussing the issues at hand and spotlighting iconoclasts associated with each movement.

Where does our food come from? Is our diet hurting us? Can eating differently bring us together as a community? The questions are not new to anyone who has read even a mildly left-of-center food blog any time in the past six years — but a good, focused mini-documentary on, say, soil science never hurt anyone.

The first episode airs tonight on KOCE at 10:30 p.m. The pilot episode focuses on urban agriculture. Three episodes or so in, the show will head to SoCal. Below, check out the clip about school lunch in the Los Angeles Unified School District and drink in those warm, taken-out-of-context fuzzies like a carton of chocolate milk.

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