If what you really want to do is just look for one string in another than index is the better tool:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $match = "Tick F***ing Tock";
my $str = "Friday night at 11:30pm the start of a new series, 'Tick F*
+**ing Tock' explores...";

if (-1 != index $str, $match) {
  print "..do something..\n";
}
[download]

If you really want to use a regex then use quotemeta to do the quoting for you:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $match = "Tick F***ing Tock";
my $str = "Friday night at 11:30pm the start of a new series, 'Tick F*
+**ing Tock' explores...";

$match = quotemeta $match;

if ($str =~ $match) {
  print "..do something..\n";
}
[download]