The Simpsons' tribute to Alan Rickman is absolutely perfect

Mulling over which Alan Rickman films to watch for a sofa-led vigil to the late actor this weekend?

Such was his output, you might want to pick two films - just as the animators for The Simpsons have done in this brief if brilliant tribute to the actor, which also features the vocals of Benedict Cumberbatch.

In the clip - part of an episode set to be aired soon - Homer and a few more of Springfield’s men folk try to better understand their wives and girlfriends by watching rom-com Love Indubitably, a spot-on parody of Love Actually in which a bumbling Prime Minister voiced by Cumberbatch uses his seat of power in the Commons to declare his love for his “poor but cheeky secretary” Eliza Commonbottom.

As mass hysteria breaks out, so too does an uplifting rock song - a tip of the hat to the recently departed David Bowie, it's All the Young Dudes - before Rickman, as Snape from the Harry Potter franchise, appears to give a speech about love. 

Not done there, the daftness continues and it's soon an all-out anglophile love affair. Beefeaters dance. Churchill, Shakespeare and a few other British icons ape The Full Monty. Alfred Hitchcock steps out of Dr Who’s Tardis. In short, it's enough to make any Brit well up with pride.

We'd tell our American friends that this doesn't actually happen in Westminster but then where's the fun in that?