MONTREAL -- A TV miniseries looking at the gritty world of outlaw bikers will likely be able to claim a captive audience among those who tune in to see it.

Lawyers for Hells Angels bikers now awaiting trial unsuccessfully tried to get an advance screening of The Last Chapter, a fictional account of a worldwide biker gang's expansion into Ontario, its last unconquered territory. Hells lawyers wanted to ensure the series, which will be broadcast on both the French and English networks of the CBC, wouldn't prejudice potential jurors in pending trials.

"We're not afraid, it's just to protect the interests of our clients," Hells lawyer Ron MacDonald said Thursday.

Marc Sevigny, a spokesman for Radio-Canada, said the bikers will have to wait to see the series like anyone else.

"For us, there is no prejudice with this series since it's fiction," said Sevigny.

"It's not a representation of reality, although obviously it's based on something that is happening in society.

"We can't open the door because every person or group that would think there would be a controversy with a series would want to make an injunction to stop us from broadcasting that series."

The six-hour miniseries is being broadcast on CBC-TV starting Sunday at 8 p.m. ET and will start on Radio-Canada, the Crown broadcaster's French language network on Wednesday. Each scene was shot first in one language, then repeated in the other.

The Last Chapter has probably benefited from more direct and indirect buzz than most TV movies.

Besides the dustup with lawyers for real-life bikers, news of police roundups in four provinces and legal wrangling at Quebec biker trials was also in the media as publicists flogged the show.

But the star and the writer of The Last Chapter are quick to separate fiction from fact, even though the Hells celebrated the first anniversary of their long-sought expansion into Ontario last December.

"We're not doing the Hells Angels," said Michael Ironside, who plays chilling biker boss Bob Durelle. The character leads the expansion of the fictional Triple Sixers into Ontario.

"We're not doing anything even closely related to that. This is a dramatization of current events."

Luc Dionne, who wrote the acclaimed Quebec mob series Omerta: The Law of Silence before taking on The Last Chapter, said it's a co-incidence the show seems to mirror current events in the real world.

"It was not planned that way because I started to write this three years ago and we shot it last year," said Dionne.

Dionne actually was planning to write a TV series on politics - he served as a political aide to the Quebec Liberals between 1985 and 1990 - when he was approached to tackle the biker story.

His friend, Quebec provincial police biker expert Guy Ouellette convinced him to tackle the project when he pointed out it had not been done seriously before.

"I've always been fascinated by organized crime people and the way they live," Dionne said. "There's a professional life and a personal life. How can you work in both those universes at the same time? I mean, these guys have kids and wives and mothers like regular people.

"What interests me is stories about power."

Ironside noted, "we're not doing the Brady Bunch", but he was also quick to dismiss some suggestions the program was a Canadian version of The Sopranos, the popular TV tale of a New Jersey mob family.

Ironside, who is engaging in an interview, infuses his portrayal of Durelle with ruthlessness. His character is equally comfortable shooting the breeze with friends as he is shooting bullets into rivals.

"I played Bob Durelle almost like he's a drug addict, but not for drugs - it's for power," said Ironside, who has appeared in such TV shows as ER and films including The Perfect Storm.

"There's an avarice about him and I really see it as the same avarice that took over our stock exchange and our corporate world in the '70s, '80s and early '90s, that more is better, bigger is better."

He said he didn't pattern his character on any biker bosses. However, he did ask technical adviser Ouellette how they would likely react in certain situations and he watched some police surveillance tapes and news footage of bikers to get a feel for them.

Ouellette, who retired recently after 32 years with the provincial police, praised the production and said the series could prove educational as well as entertaining.

"The characters are fiction but we did our best to put credibility in the script," said Ouellette, who noted a sequel is already in the works. "It's a series that's going to show the people about their personal and professional life, the clash of cultures between the anglos and the Quebecers, the clash of cultures between different police agencies."

Ironside is quick to praise his co-stars, such as Marina Orsini, who plays his wife, and Celine Bonnier who portrays the wife of a biker played by Quebec heart throb Roy Dupuis. He said the family life represented by these characters flesh out the story beyond the cops and crooks angle.

"The women really are the heart and soul of the piece because the reality is that there are children out there," Ironside said. "There is a kind of dysfunctional family unit that we're trying to represent and in this piece, the real crime is the women and children in it.

"There's more than one crying mother or crying wife standing over a body."