What kind of Britain does the Olympics reveal?

Look at the giant logos and the billboards and you might think it's Corporate Britain. Look at the massive McDonald's in the Olympic village and you might think it's Fat Britain. Look at the Union Jacks at last night's opening ceremony, and you might even think it's United Britain.

But what about Artistic Britain? That has been on show in the arts events and performances that make up the Cultural Olympiad and in particular a number of short works by filmmakers such as Lynne Ramsay, and the duo Max and Dania. Their brief was to make films inspired by London 2012 and among the results were Ramsay's The Swimmer (Tuesday, BBC Two, 11.45pm) and Max and Dania's What If (Tuesday, BBC Two, 11.20pm).

The Swimmer, which follows a man as he makes his way through Britain, had the best idea, although has Ramsay ever seen Burt Lancaster's 1960s film The Swimmer? Has she ever seen its poster with the tagline that shouts: "When you talk about The Swimmer, will you talk about yourself?"

Certainly, Ramsay plays around with exactly the same idea of us looking at a swimmer and looking at ourselves: here's a man doing the crawl through British waters, his eyes are low, his mouth gulps at the air, and we're down on the surface of the water with him, looking out at the country from a weird, disconcerting angle.

The soundtrack, which comes and goes as if our heads are also bobbing below the surface, is made up of little clips of sound archive. It's obvious immediately that they are from long ago – they drift forward from the 1950s and 1960s – but not all of them are immediately recognisable, although there's Billy Liar certainly, and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner.

At first, the clips tempt you into thinking Ramsay's film is about the past, that it's nostalgic for a long-ago Britain, but quite the opposite is the case: the swimmer is a modern man cutting through the water, and the past, and heading somewhere else (as he does, he avoids a few frightening elements such as the children from Lord Of The Flies). By the end, it feels positive without being patronising, which probably means it has fulfilled its brief to reflect the Olympics rather well.

Unfortunately, What If was just the opposite: a condescending pop video about bullying, smoking and other naughty things children might be tempted to do. It followed a young boy just about to become a teenager who lives on a council estate and might go bad. Which is when an angel, or a ghost from the future, or something, turns up and starts mangling Kipling's If.

Gradually – because he had to – the boy realises what he's doing wrong. He takes the cigarette from his mouth. He hands stolen money back to a bullying victim. And one by one, we're shown a rainbow, a fluttering feather and a slow-motion smile – images that were trite 30 years when they first appeared in New Romantic pop videos. It was like the Grange Hill Just Say No campaign from the 1980s. It was trite, unsubtle and hollow. Like The Swimmer, it probably fulfilled its brief to reflect the Olympics rather well.