Hey Bob if you happen to read this, thank you so much! i had another go with Symlinks yesterday (was getting way too messy the way I'd done it) and it worked a treat! not sure what i was doing wrong the other day, but it is just perfect. thank you thank you.
AFAIK, Symlinks are supposed to use the template of the target page (rather than that of the Symlink itself -- which should be ignored).
So the TVs *should* be available. Are the pages in different contexts? If not, you may have found a bug.
I'm glad you got it sorted.