Esai Morales will play a military type

Esai Morales will take a recurring role on CBS' resurrected midseason drama "Jericho."

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Morales has contracted for six of this season's scheduled seven episodes of "Jericho."

Morales will be playing a career military officer who hasn't heard from his wife since the nuclear attacks that started the show's first season. The trade paper offers no explanation for how Morales' Col. Hoffman will tie into the lives of the struggling community of Jericho.

Shooting on "Jericho" begins this week and will run through September. CBS has yet to set a premiere date for the series, which was cancelled in May, but earned a reprieve after an extensive fan advocacy campaign.

Last fall, Morales appeared on FOX's "Vanished," a serialized drama that wasn't lucky (or perhaps good) enough to prompt a "Jericho"-esque show-saving campaign. The former "NYPD Blue" star appeared in FOX's pilot "The Cure." While the network picked up the options for several members of that medical ensemble's cast, Morales was free to go elsewhere.