Mel Lastman, welcome to our nightmare.

The Last Chapter, a six-hour, $10-million miniseries that debuts this week on the CBC and Radio-Canada, sends Quebec's home-grown biker wars rumbling down the 401 for a brutal pile-up on the Toronto mayor's turf. Michael Ironside, Roy Dupuis, Marina Orsini, Michel Forget and Dan Bigras head a predominantly made-in-Quebec cast in this fictional tale of the bloody battle for control of the narcotics, prostitution, loan-sharking and illegal betting that are the bread-and butter of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Shifting focus from Montreal's barb-wired bunkers to Toronto's beer parlours and strip joints seems calculated, based more on the demographics of Canada's larger English-speaking television audience - and the fact that the CBC quarterbacked the project - than on what's been going down on Canada's mean streets for the last decade. More than 150 people, including a few innocent victims, have been killed and 300 injured in this province since the Hells Angels and Rock Machine squared off in a territorial fight to the death for supremacy in Quebec's criminal underworld.

Yet Luc Dionne, the political attaché-turned-screenwriter whose credits include the popular Mafiosi miniseries Omertá, says taking the show on the road was a logical invention, spurred along by shop talk with a friend who is a biker expert and by the Hells' encroachment last year on Ontario soil. In fact, much of The Last Chapter/Le Dernier Chapitre hinges on the unhappy alliance between members of a barely disguised Quebec gang called the Triple Sixers and their new brothers-in-arms in T.O.

The Last Chapter is, of course, a work of fiction, its characters figments of Dionne's mob-infested imagination. Michael Ironside plays Bob Durelle, the imperious boss of the Toronto-based Death Riders who embraces the offer from Montreal boss Zip O'Connors (Frank Schorpion). Durelle believes links with the international gang will help its expand its market and lower the cost of doing business - the business being drugs.

Roy Dupuis is Ross Desbiens, the smouldering Franco-Ontarian who is Durelle's closest ally inside and outside the clubhouse. Desbiens opposes plans to join camps with the Quebec bikers, but makes a secret pact with Durelle to divide and conquer. Meanwhile, in Montreal, francophone bikers are wary of getting swamped by the gang's expansion into Ontario. Led by Roots Racine (Dan Bigras), they plot revenge. Michel Forget plays Bill Gu?nette, the jaded veteran cop who watches it all unfold while trying to stave off rearguard attacks from incompetent bosses.

For television viewers unschooled in gangland lore and unfamiliar with Dionne's intricate story structure, the first hour of The Last Chapter will be tough going. It takes time and patience to develop relationships between allies and enemies and factions that splinter along linguistic, ethnic and geographic lines. But bad things come to those who wait. Before long, there'll be enough shooting and bombing to satisfy even the most blood-thirsty viewer.

Dionne, who is already working on a sequel to The Last Chapter, said that when he works on a new project he can spend months developing characters before even thinking about plot or dialogue. Making the people seem real is key if a story is going to work, he said. "We don't all remember what J.R. did in Dallas, but we all remember J.R."

As Durelle's wife Karen, Marina Orsini seems a bit classy for a biker moll, even with a cigarette and black leather pants. And it would take more than dark glasses and two days' growth of beard to make Roy Dupuis seem truly menacing. The task is a bit easier for Michael Ironside, who has spent most of his career playing the villain.

Dionne said he doesn't play favourites with his characters, although he tends to sympathize most with the victims - characters who get sucked into situations against their will. He said his goal in writing The Last Chapter was neither to glorify nor denounce the biker world. "I just wanted to demystify it."

Much of The Last Chapter is told in a biker shorthand of contract killings and power plays, internal politicking worthy of the Reform Party. When bit players are allowed to talk, there's a tendency toward the corny. Obviously, the national broadcaster wasn't ready to go for the double-barrelled, multi-syllable invective of Tony Soprano. Still, it's difficult to believe these heat-packing rogues would say the clichés that come out of their mouths instead - biting retorts like "if I wanted a ring, I'd get married," or "If I wanted a friend, I'd buy a dog." Francis Xavier McCarthy, who plays biker-artist Glen O'Sullivan - the character would be completely absurd if it weren't for that Hells Angel from Sherbrooke who played trumpet in the Quebec symphony - gets some of the biggest clunkers, whining about needing garlic for his spaghetti sauce when Desbiens has come seeking advice on a dangerous rift in the inner circle.

The unusual decision to shoot the same film in both English and French, using the same script and a bilingual cast able to work easily in both languages, required a few minor adjustments in phrasing or nuance. "The music of the languages is different, so you slalom around that," said director Richard Roy, who routinely called on actors to speed through their lines to make sure they were comfortable in both English and French.

While some of the filming was done in Toronto, the bulk of the 76-day shooting schedule was spent in and around Montreal. Roy dances diplomatically around a suggestion that the rare double shoot using the same cast is something that could only be done here.

"Asking the question is answering it," said Roy, whose first English-language feature was last year's Café Olé. "You could make it in Toronto, although you might have to bring the actors in from Quebec."

- The Last Chapter debuts tomorrow at 8 p.m. on CBMT-6 and will air in three two-hour segments. The French version, Le Dernier Chapitre, will air in six one-hour episodes beginning Wednesday at 9 p.m. on CBFT-2.

- Peggy Curran's E-mail address is pcurran@thegazette.southam.ca.