WASHINGTON - Coming soon to TV: Capitol Hill with no ugly people, limited monotony and much better clothes.

A new drama about the Senate and a sitcom about the House are in the lineup to replace a couple of fall programs that already flopped this fall. The aim is to mine Congress for sex, lies, intrigue and anything else in short supply on C-Span.

This idea might have inspired more confidence a few years ago, when The West Wing rose to prominence, but finding pop-culture appeal in Washington is a risky enterprise. This fall, the networks killed several pilots about D.C., predicting that shows about a Secret Service agent, a coterie of Georgetown power-brokers and a congressional intern would all bomb. Even The West Wing, a surprise hit for NBC since its debut in 1999, has lost viewers this season, spurring talk that the series is slipping.

Interest in TV and movies about D.C. has always waxed and waned, sometimes depending on the actual goings-on in the capital. One theory about The West Wing ratings drop, for example, holds that with George W. Bush in office, viewers no longer can pretend they are watching a docu-drama - as some say they did when Bill Clinton was president and some former Democratic staffers were script advisers for the liberal-leaning program.

As a result, Hollywood is promoting D.C. TV gingerly.

Lawrence O'Donnell, the executive producer of Mister Sterling, downplays the role of that drab extra, the federal government, in his drama.

"People who hate politics will love this show," says O'Donnell, a former writer and producer on The West Wing whose new show tells the story of an idealistic young senator from California. "There's a character who says, 'I hate politics' maybe five minutes into it."

Instead, he describes Congress the way one might an ER or a police station.

"Capitol Hill is Grand Central Station - anyone can come and go, there are a lot of uncomfortable encounters, a lot of unplanned events, a lot of scheduling disasters," O'Donnell says. "Actually, it can be a traditional television environment."

Charlie Lawrence, a new sitcom starring actor Nathan Lane in which an openly gay TV star gets elected to the House in a special election in New Mexico, also uses the capital as a kind of circus backdrop. The series departs from two sober Supreme Court dramas, which both died a quick death last year. Lane, fresh from his Broadway triumph in The Producers on Broadway, offers Washington Lite.

Executives at CBS, where Charlie Lawrence will debut as early as this month, say it is essential to mute the droning of official Washington when portraying it. "In the past, there had been a sort of ambivalent interpretation of the relationship between political shows and the audience," says Nina Tassler, the network's senior vice president of drama development. "When we realized that you can set a show in Washington that's not a straight-ahead political drama but maybe has a political nuance to it, we saw there would be interest."

Even if the shows are stripped of policy fare, experienced advisers are working to make them more believable. O'Donnell, who once worked for former New York Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sought script advice from veterans such as former Nebraska Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey.

"If somebody had suggested to me that the Senate would be a good subject for a television show, I probably would have said, 'Nah, it's too boring,' but the truth is it's not," says Kerrey. "It's got everything that good human drama has, it's got love, it's got death, it's got betrayal. We often don't see the humanity of politics, and this show allows people to see what goes on and that it's human."

For the Nathan Lane sitcom, executive producer Jeffrey Richman asked for help from legislative aides in several congressional offices, including staffers for openly gay Reps. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican, and Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. One of the show's writers is Kristin Gore, daughter of former presidential candidate Al Gore, who frequently helps on questions of Washington accuracy.

"I had staff members delivering lines from the House floor even though they wouldn't be there, little stuff like that we had to correct," says Richman, a former writer-producer for Frasier. "You'll have [the characters] come out of the House and go into a committee meeting, and you'll ask Kristin, 'Would they really do that?'"

Adds Richman: "It's really hard to do a Washington comedy. The last thing I want to do is make the character stupid or goof the government. You've got to make the government real and make this guy want to serve and still get laughs."

Former and current congressional staffers who are proofreading these Capitol Hill scripts say that even some basic D.C. details fail the realism test.

"There was maybe a reference to the 'Jefferson Monument' instead of the 'Jefferson Memorial,'" says Patrick Baugh, a Kolbe aide who gave technical advice on the script. "I remember a reference to Nathan Lane's apartment in the Watergate, that you could see the Washington Monument from there. I checked and made sure that was the case." (In fact, it's visible from some Watergate balconies.)

Despite some excitement for D.C. as a TV locale - bolstered by the three best drama Emmys scored by The West Wing - others feel burned by the capital.

"Maybe politics is a little like hotdog making; we like to enjoy it, but we certainly don't want to look behind the scenes about how it's made," says Rod Lurie, whose pilot Capital City, a drama about a Capitol Hill intern, was not picked up by ABC.

Lurie, who directed the political film The Contender, calls The West Wing a "beautiful freak of nature" whose success is largely due to great writing. But one hit D.C. show does not a trend make, he says, arguing, "Some people get cold feet about doing a political show and I understand why: Only one has ever really succeeded."

Some literary agents say last year's terrorist attacks, and the continued tense atmosphere around the capital, have made Washington a tough sell for TV.

"What you get on the news and CNN and 60 Minutes, there's so much of that, people are staying away from it right now," says Lenny Bekerman, who sells scripts in Hollywood. The latest trend, he argues, is as far from Washington as it gets.

"Scripts for supernatural-type shows," he says. "They're very big now."