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Rove McManus makes his return to Australian television

Rove McManus (centre) will share the spotlight with actress Jane Harber (left) and comedian Joel Creasey (right).

Rove McManus (centre) will share the spotlight with actress Jane Harber (left) and comedian Joel Creasey (right). Photo: Network Ten

Rove McManus is returning to TV screens around the country nearly 10 years after he took an indefinite hiatus from Australia’s entertainment industry to pursue a career in the United States.

On March 22, McManus will stage his comeback as the host of new Channel Ten series Show Me the Movie!, a one-hour show in front of a live studio audience combining comedy and improv with famous faces and film facts.

It’s a long overdue return for the 44-year-old, who was the darling of the local entertainment industry when he called time on his popular variety show Rove in 2009 before relocating to the US in 2011.

While McManus has been a guest host on The Project and hosted a season of Whovians for the ABC in recent years, Show Me the Movie! sees him sit back in the hosting seat full time.

McManus will share the screen with actress Jane Harber and comedian Joel Creasey, who will each captain a team competing in their knowledge of movie trivia.

Rove in his Australian television heyday, with former wife Belinda Emmett at the 2000 TV Week Logies. Photo: Getty

It’s not too much of a departure from what McManus has spent the past decade doing in the United States, but he will be hoping for more ratings and critical success than his most recent TV outings.

While in the US, he appeared as guest on a string of high-profile shows like E! Entertainment‘s Chelsea Lately and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but was unable to find success as the main event.

He began with Rove LA in 2011, a weekly talk show filmed in Los Angeles that ran for two seasons before being scrapped, after Australian reviewers called it “uncomfortable” and “lifeless”.

He then hosted 2014’s Riot, a Fox game show produced by Hollywood heavyweight Steve Carell that was cancelled after a season due to poor ratings.

His last US endeavour was 2015’s Lie Detectors, a New York-based game show in which the audience was asked to guess which of a panel of three comedians was lying – McManus being one of them. It lasted one season.

Even McManus’ efforts to break back into the Australian radio scene came to an untimely end when his nightly radio show with Bachelorette star Sam Frost was axed after 18 months.

Speaking to Stellar magazine this month, McManus said he had “long since moved on”.

“I don’t have a lot to say on that except, file it under ‘it was what it was’,” he said of the radio stint.

rove wife

Rove and his wife Tasma Walton at the 2017 AACTA Awards. Photo: Getty

Now, McManus has returned to Sydney and is finally ready to re-set his sights on the country where he cut his comedic teeth, having toured in 2017 with his stand-up comedy show.

His home life is settled too – after tragically losing first wife Belinda Emmett to cancer in 2006, he began dating actress Tasma Walton, a former colleague who first introduced him to Emmett.

They married in 2009 after Walton proposed to the TV host and the two have a four-year-old daughter together.

“I ticked so many things off the list that I had when I was younger. Now I’m thinking, just sit back and enjoy things and say yes when you feel like it,” McManus told the Herald Sun last year.

“Maybe I would like to do a talk show if anybody’s interested. But maybe I don’t want to work as much so I can be there as a hands-on dad.”

Show Me the Movie! airs on March 22 at 7.30pm on Channel Ten.

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