Now, as a white hetero male, I'd never really had much understanding of that.

Because I see representations of myself all the time. I grew up watching TV shows that were full of white males - and if there was a female or an ethnic character there, they were always a supporting player.

They were there for comic effect rather than being a driver of the show.

Recently I got a small taste of what it might feel like to not see yourself represented - via having a heart attack.

Now it might seem like a long bow, but stay with me. It happened January 1 and I later was sent to cardiac rehab classes.

I'm in my early 50s and when I looked around at the group in those sessions, they all seemed to be in their 70s or 80s.

I didn't see myself anywhere and, I'll be honest, it messed with my head. It got me wondering, whether I was worse off health-wise than I realised if all the other people in the group were at least in their 70s.

It was a feeling of not belonging, of not having a place, that I hadn't experienced before. Though in the scheme of things, it was only for four hours a week.

It was a small insight into what it must have been like for those belonging to various ethnic groups, or who are part of the LGBTQI community or those with some sort of disability.

I only had to deal with it four hours a week - they have had to deal with that for their entire lives.

So it is good to see that the tides have been changing in recent years - and not just by placing token characters into shows so the creators can say "hey, look how right on and aware we are".

The national broadcaster is doing its bit right now with a pair of shows - Better Date Than Never and House of Gods.

The former takes a leaf out of the book of much-loved Love on the Spectrum in providing an antidote to the oft-toxic and ugly dating shows the commercial networks have decided we need.

In Better Date Than Never we follow a group of people on their quests for love. There's the awkward geek Kento, Jack with his cerebral palsy, transgender farmer Dianne and Seventh Day Adventist Asher.

As much as possible the show lets these people speak for themselves, lets them set the narrative and is always, always sympathetic to what they're going through.

While we get to see the people behind the various labels we put on others, more importantly transgender people, those with cerebral palsy or other issues get to see themselves represented on TV.

They get to feel that, yes, they matter. That they are part of something, that they have been seen.

The other show doing similar work on the ABC is a six-part series where there are almost no white characters - and those who are play very, very minor roles.

The series in question is House of Gods, which focuses on an Iraqi Australian family, led by Sheikh Mohammad who is running for the position of head cleric at a Western Sydney mosque.

It shows the Muslim way of life and does so in a very matter-of-fact way; there is thankfully no exposition to teach a white viewer what's happening.

It's a show made primarily for people in that world, with those experiences and so they don't need any explanations.

For the Anglo people, we're left to work out for ourselves what's going on - which so often preferred to TV's usual tendency to spoon-feed us the narrative.

In the process we get an insight into a world few of us are familiar with.

The show was co-created and written by Osamah Sami, who plays Sheikh Mohammad's son Isa, precisely because he wanted to see his own culture represented on television.

"Spending most of my young adult life in a mosque, I craved to see my beloved Arab/Iraqi community reflected in mainstream culture," Sami said.

"This longing gave birth to House of Gods - a celebration of my community with all its colours and flaws."