It's innocent and light in the first episodes from 1978, eg a hamster escaping from the biology lab being the main plot line...I am guessing it does have more sinister episodes over the next two decades
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Yes, it gets heavier. The whole first season is more like a sort of pilot for the rest. Most, if not all, of the plot threads in S1 are only across the one episode, and are simple "nice" tales with firm wrap-ups at the end of them. And it's only 9 episodes, so they were obviously being careful about how much of it they commissioned.
S2, partially, and then S3 start expanding the plots across multiple episodes, and the seasons become longer. They also start that rather nice idea of having the occasional episode (or pair of episodes) away from the school (e.g. orienteering, zoo visit, French visit or something) and done completely on film.
I usually watch it up to the end of S17 (1994)* which is when both Luisa Bradshaw White (Maria) and the long-running Rachel Victoria Roberts (Justine) both leave. That point seems to wrap things up nicely. There's nothing wrong with the acting after that (in fact the acting in GH always got better as it went along) but there become fairly chronic problems with the clarity and likelihood of the plots, and there's some fairly amateur-night scripting and script-editing going on: things become illogical and plot strands are left hanging etc. etc. (the pre-echoes of these problems are certainly detectable in the few years preceding S17 too, though to a lesser extent.) Political correctness is also threatening to take over completely at this point, and one of the delights of the old GH was that it wasn't PC in any way. They also start trying some comedy episodes (one, for example, involves Mr Robson believing the school has been invaded by aliens - I kid you not). It all starts to become a bit of a trial, and, bless 'em, reasonable little actors like Lisa West, Belinda Crane and Laura Sadler deserved better material. It would never again reach the heights of its first decade or so, and I understand viewing figures were seriously falling off by this point too.
(* although S18 is OK too, but it's beginning a bit of another new GH era, which maybe better not started with? Thereafter, forget it.)