Thanks to other developers I discovered the magic of suspending an app on tvOS. I had a side menu using a UITabBarController underneath, but to close the app it involved some custom handling in pressesBegan that never quite worked like I wanted it to. Instead I am now able to put a gesture recognized on my menu for the menu button from the remote that then calls this to suspend the app and everything works as desired.
UIApplication.shared.perform(#selector(NSXPCConnection.suspend))